Coasting Along

2011-12-17T14:07:00.004-05:00

Day 16 is for thinking about our blessings, what we're grateful for this season. I made a pocket and put my journaling inside, because it's private this year.

Day 17 is about a perfect gift, something we're excited to give or have been given. I feel amazingly "blah" about most of the Christmas gifts I'm giving this year, so I focused on an unexpected gift I was given instead--our four days in Florida last week. It really was wonderful.

I'm slopping around the house in my PJs today, till it's time to get showered, dressed and made up for Todd's office Christmas party this evening. His company is holding the party at the Hampton Air and Space Museum this year, so I think it's really going to be fun!

2011-12-15T12:19:00.011-05:00

I did another big catch-up this morning...after mailing ALL my packages and picking up a couple of Christmas gifts. I rule Christmas. So far, anyway.

Day 13 is about music--I used a picture of my new red memory stick dedicated solely to Christmas music. A 4x6 photo goes in the front:

And the journaling goes on the back:

Day 14 is about gifts...I took a photo of the gifts under the tree (before they went into boxes) and added a neat sticker I found at the post office. I thought a USPS sticker might be a nice memento in ten years when we're back to sending smoke signals and telegrams because USPS is no more.

Day 15 is about visitors and visiting. We'll be receiving guests this year rather than being guests. I'm okay with that, except it means I need to clean my house in a big way.

Just got a big box from Amazon plunked onto the front porch by my awesome mailman, so I'm off to wrap presents and maybe have a cup of tea for my scratchy throat.

Trees present and past.

2011-12-13T10:49:00.006-05:00

Day 11 of my "Journal Your Christmas" is always about the Christmas tree. This year we put up our big tree for the first time in several years, and I used all my old ornaments, as I mentioned before, plus gold ribbon and the snowflakes my Grandma Clark crocheted for me about ten years ago.

This page has a fold-out page protector--the side with the tree photo folds out, allowing for two more photos:

Day 12 is about Christmases of the past...I found an old Christmas tree photo from the 1970s on Flickr, and used that as a jumping-off point for writing about the homemade star that was on top of our tree through my early childhood years. My mom made it from cardboard and tin foil, and I've been trying to find one like it (which is of course impossible) my whole adult life.

The two pieces for Day 12 fit into the back side of the Day 11 page protector. I love having all these different sizes and configurations to play with.

Home, and catching up.

2011-12-11T13:41:00.012-05:00

We got home from Florida yesterday afternoon and did the usual "get milk and bread, catch up on the mail, unpack a little, sit and chill" routine. I also worked on my Christmas journal a bit last night, and more this morning.

We had an absolutely wonderful time in Florida. We stayed in a hotel right on the Gulf, and then Todd had about a 15-minute drive to the company he was working with. (They're making a part for the project he's been working on for NASA.)

Todd ended up not having to work quite as much as he'd expected, so we were actually able to drive around and do quite a few things...we went to the historic Kenwood district in St. Pete (lots of Craftsman bungalows, which we love) and to the Dali Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts. We had dinner at the Vinoy resort on Tampa Bay, a gorgeous hotel from the 1920s, all pink and white like a wedding cake. Our last day there, we drove up to Orlando and went to Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party at the Magic Kingdom, and then flew home from Orlando the next day. The weather was mostly perfect, especially near the water. A couple of mornings, I sat on the hotel's deck, about 25 feet from the water, and wrote out all my Christmas cards. It was idyllic, to say the least. I was so glad that Todd wanted me to come along with him.

To continue with my Christmas journal, here's Day 6. The theme is "two Christmases," one good and one bad, but I have never enjoyed thinking about bad Christmas experiences--and have fortunately not had many. I saw another class member's journal entry for this day where she wrote about how her son likes to sleep under the Christmas tree at night, and that made me think of lying under the Christmas tree with my glasses off as a child. I loved those blurry lights, they seemed twice as pretty!

Day 7 is a "to do" list. I actually have quite a bit yet to do for Christmas. I wrote down everything I could think of, but I know there's more...

Day 8 is always about the sights of Christmas. This was fun to do this year, since on the 8th we were in Florida and I could get some pictures of a tropical Christmas. This page protector opens out, so here's the two 4x6" slots on the front:

And here's the inside, with photos:

And here's the back side:

Day 9 is about traditions. We simply don't seem to have any--at least not anything we do every year. I wrote about decorating my tree with all my old ornaments, instead of vintage Shiny-Brites, this year.

And Day 10 is always about wrapping paper. Last year I found two rolls from Hallmark that I'd bought the year before on clearance--of course, I didn't find them till I'd already bought paper for Christmas that year! So I knew this year I wouldn't need to buy any at all. I just wrapped a piece of cardstock like a package. I know that lovely ribbon will get squished when I put the page in the album! The tag is from a Trader Joe's grocery bag--they have all sort of gift tags printed on them this year.

Back to Mount Laundry for me.

Advent.

2011-12-05T13:32:00.005-05:00

Today's journal entry is about Advent. For the first time since I was a kid, I have an Advent calendar this year. It's shaped like a tall apartment building with lots of windows and doors, and you open one up for each day. Inside are tiny people and animals doing holiday things. It's just darling!

This entry goes into a vertical 4x6" page protector. I put a photo of the calendar on the front:

And the writing goes on the back:

Last night we went to see Handel's "Messiah," at Hampton University, which is becoming something of a tradition for us. We went with some friends and then had dinner afterwards. The concert is always held on the first Sunday in December, and usually when we go, we're all bundled up and running from the car to the concert hall to get out of the cold wind that blows off the water. This year, we were in light jackets, and actually took a little stroll along the water beforehand. Crazy weather. The concert was wonderful, especially the "Hallelujah Chorus," and dinner was great, too. Lots of good conversation.

We are heading out of town for a few days, so I'll have to catch up with my journal when I get back. Todd has to go to St. Petersburg, FL to do some work, and he found me a ridiculously cheap ticket, so I'm tagging along. Last year we went to the ocean side of Florida, so I'm excited about seeing the gulf side this time.

The more you give, the more you'll get.

2011-12-04T11:50:00.007-05:00

We're having a lazy morning today. Todd was out fishing till dawn, and I was up till 2 AM reading Stephen King's latest brick of a book. So we slept pretty late!

The prompt for today is about envisioning your perfect Christmas. This year, for numerous reasons, I want to try to focus as little as possible on what would make Christmas perfect for me, and more on helping other people have a good Christmas season in general. I heard a lyric in a Christmas song yesterday that said, "The more you give at Christmastime, the more you'll get." I thought that was perfect as a mantra for this month.

These pieces will go into the flip side of the double 4x6" page protector I posted yesterday.

And here they are in the album.

Have a great day today, whatever you're doing!

Shoes and fireworks.

2011-12-03T11:40:00.004-05:00

In my shoe- and slipper-shopping yesterday, I managed to do the unprecedented and bring home a pair of shoes that was too large and a pair of slippers that was too small.

I got up first thing this morning and rectified the problem, wanting to get in and out of the shopping center before the Saturday + Christmas craziness started, and I succeeded--plus I got a second pair of shoes, so it really was all worthwhile! At least that's what I'll tell Todd when he wants to know why I left with two shoeboxes and came home with three.

Today's journal entry is about Christmas cards. The album I'm using comes with all different shapes and sizes of page protectors, and this one has two 4x6" slots, one above the other. So here are the two pieces outside the page protector:

And here they are in the album. I think this is going to be a fun way to do this journal. Other page protectors fold out, some are large, some are small...very interesting.

Every year I think I should break out of my vintage-style rut and do something really modern and bright for my Christmas book...and every year I fall back into the vintage rut. Except it's not really a rut if you love it. I just think Christmas and vintage go together hand in hand. Plus it's fun finding little odds and ends for the book all year long at flea markets.

Todd had the idea to go to our city's tree lighting and fireworks ceremony last night. And it was a good idea...in theory. I didn't realize it, but it turns out that being jammed up against masses of people in a tight pack pushes me toward a panic attack. So we went up on the roof of the parking garage and watched the fireworks from up there. We had no idea it was going to be such a crowd! I don't think I ever want to do that again. I loved him for thinking of it, though. Fireworks with your sweetie--who wouldn't love that? Fireworks with your sweetie and 40,000 others...not quite as much fun.

Ready for cold weather.

2011-12-02T15:27:00.003-05:00

December 2's prompt is always about the weather. And I am feeling grumpy about the weather this year. The fall has been unbelievably warm, and it doesn't seem like it's going to get cold any time soon. Today it was 63 degrees, bright sunshine, and I had to have the windows down in my car because I was too hot in a long-sleeve tee and jeans. I hate to sweat.

Ah well. Today has been a great day...I went shoe- and slipper-shopping, picked up some Christmas presents, bought three outfits for Angel Tree children at the mall, and had lunch with my friend Tracy. A little sweating was worth it!

Journal Your Christmas.

2011-12-01T10:19:00.006-05:00

Well, I don't know what happened to the month of November, but it whooshed by amazingly fast. We had a nice visit from Todd's parents over Veterans' Day weekend, we had a terrific Thanksgiving with our friends Dawn and Dave Pullman, and I don't know what happened to the rest of the month!

Since it's December 1st, that means it's time for another year of Journal Your Christmas. This is a yearly class I take, along with hundreds of other people around the world, in order to make a journal or album about our Christmas season. This year--my sixth year!--I'm using an 8x8" chipboard album with page protectors of different sizes and shapes.

Here's the album cover. I ended up feeling very confused about what to do with a bare chipboard album. I don't like using paint (too messy), and covering it completely with paper (via Mod Podge) is something I never have luck with (and also messy.)

I ended up just making a decorated block to cover most of the front cover, and I'll probably just leave the rest plain. Oh, and I'll eventually make a title block for the spine.

Todd dragged me to a flea market last weekend, and I found that gorgeous old postcard. Seemed like the perfect thing for the cover.

The first of December is always a day where we look ahead and think about what we envision for our Christmas, the things we want to focus on. I'm starting with an 8x8 page today.

We already have so much planned this season, I know December will fly by even faster than November did. I'm looking forward to it.

My mums.

2011-11-02T12:11:00.005-04:00

This is the time of year when my chrysanthemums go nuts, and I just love it. I discovered a few years ago that mums do really well in our soil and with our southern exposure. They swell and grow all summer long, getting bigger and greener, and by October, they're really spectacular.

I had two enormous white mums right by the path to the front door that were always at their peak at Halloween, and several years a few of the trick-or-treaters would pet them as they passed. They did look like big fluffy dogs. But one died this spring, and the other is about half-dead. Fortunately, I have another one nearby that has become just as monstrous this year:

I planted one last year that I think is like the Cadillac of chrysanthemums...red with yellow centers. I'd love to find some more like it:

The last several years, I've been buying mums in pots for the front porch steps and then planting them in the flowerbeds when they've faded. This year all I found were white, yellow and purple, nothing too exotic. In my experience, the white ones really thrive and the yellow ones are more half-hearted. I'm not sure about the purple ones...I don't think I've had any planted long enough to tell yet. I just love a plant that gives you plenty of bang for your buck: lots of growth, lots of flowers, and several years' worth of both.

We had a very nice Halloween; our friends Cheryl and Chris Potthast and their son Matthew came over for baked potatoes and hot cider. We sat on the front porch for a while and handed out candy. Not a lot of trick-or-treaters this year...my estimate was about 40 kids. This means we have a pile of Tootsie Roll pops to dispose of...somehow.

Go Cardinals!

2011-10-28T21:24:00.003-04:00

Sitting here rooting for the Cardinals in Game 7 of the World Series...and scanning the stands for a peek of my brother, who's in St. Louis and at the game tonight. He's a tall guy, but I don't think it will be easy to find him in a sea of umpteen-thousand faces!

I talked to him this afternoon and he was very excited--and it's so much more fun for Todd and I to watch this game, knowing he's there.

We are Cardinals fans by inheritance--our dad is from northeastern Missouri and in fact my brother and I were both born there. (My sister was born in Ohio after we moved there in 1976.) My brother is a die-hard fan...I am more of a casual Cardinals fan, as in "Oh, they're in the play-offs? Cool." But I did catch the last couple innings of the game last night and it was a thrill.

I was sitting here wondering how I learned about baseball: walks, strikes, balls, etc. I don't know all the details of the game, but I do know the main points, and there are virtually no other sports I can say that about. I must have absorbed it from walking through the living room on summer evenings when Dad and Jeremy were watching.

I actually saw a Cardinals game with my brother at the old Busch stadium in 2004. We had driven to Missouri together for our grandmother's 80th birthday party, and we stopped off in St. Louis for a game. We also stopped in Cincinnati and saw a Reds game on the way home. My first two--and only, so far--real live MLB games. They were both so much fun, and the best part was getting to experience it with my brother. Wish we could do that kind of thing more often!

Right now St. Louis is up 3-2, top of the fifth, and David Freese just caught an acrobatic out. Go Cardinals!

Betty book.

2011-10-26T15:19:00.010-04:00

I had to run into the library this morning to pick up a book I'd requested, and I stopped to look at the Friends of the Library sale rack just inside the front door.

I never really noticed this rack before--it's in an awkward place between the door and the metal detectors--and I think if I ever did glance at it, it was just a cursory "James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Danielle Steel, yeahyeahyeah" kind of glance.

A few weeks ago, I went in with my father-in-law and he stopped at the rack right away and found something he wanted. So now I'm noticing it more.

Today I found this for a buck:

I thought maybe there was a nice dust jacket under that paper bag cover, but alas no. So it's not an awesome find, but I am a sucker for old Betty Crocker books. I have a ring-bound Picture Cookbook (the edition before this one) and I have a hardback cookbook from the 60s that's the same edition my mom had in ring-bound when I was a kid. I used to love to pore over the pictures, and it has some excellent recipes for pound cake and oatmeal cookies, among other things. I have a Betty Crocker Cooky Book from the early 1970s, too. I just love the bright pictures in old cookbooks...they're too bright in a vaguely unappetizing way.

You know, you just don't see radish roses any more, and I think that's a darn shame.

These are the Betty Crocker test kitchens of the 1950's. They tested "new and glamorous" recipes in the Kitchen of Tomorrow...wonder what those would have been? Cheese fondue? Pizza rolls? Sushi?

This link shows the different Betty cookbooks over the ages (if you scroll down a tad.) The first red one is the one I have in ring-bound. The second one is the one I picked up today--that's what the jacket would have looked like. The third one is one I have salivated over on Ebay more than once. And the fourth one is the one my mom had in ring-bound and I have in hardcover.

Beyond those years, I think the editions are not as cute. I have a Better Homes and Gardens book to represent the 80s and beyond--it was a wedding present to me in 1992. Love that one, too--I always have to check it every time I make hard-boiled eggs, as I don't seem to be able to keep the procedure in my head. It's very useful, but it's not as charming as the old books with their ultra-bright pictures.

This book that I found today is in really nice shape, a few places where the spine is cleaved, but the pages are clean. I always hope for handwritten recipes tucked into these old cookbooks, but no such luck with this one. There's only one page that looks worn and has some liquid damage. It has recipes for cottage pudding with vanilla, lemon, chocolate or nutmeg sauce; cinnamon fluff; cherry carnival; and Iowa date pudding. I wonder which one was the family favorite? Upon reading, it looks like "cottage pudding" is just a plain white cake baked in a 9" pan. That sounds much more appetizing than "cottage pudding," which made me think of steamed cottage cheese.

New look.

2011-10-25T21:44:00.006-04:00

I finally took some time today and sat down and figured out how to customize my blog, instead of whining about not knowing how. What a concept, eh? It took longer than I wanted it to, mainly because Blogger seems to have been designed by teenage boys who probably snicker in their cubicles, thinking of all the middle-aged women out there shrieking in frustration. Not that I'm bitter--I could have been wasting those two hours cleaning toilets or something.

The fall picture I found for my header above is one I took almost exactly a year ago, on the Wilderness battlefield in northern Virginia, one of the loveliest, quietest, most blood-soaked spots in the U.S. We were there last year to celebrate my 40th birthday. This past weekend, although I liked the nice round shape of 40, Mother Nature decreed that I must move on, to 41. I dislike odd numbers very much. They seem so jagged and don't fit neatly into slots.

Case in point: 2011, an odd number for an odd year. I'm not sure what has happened to me this year. There have been plenty of normal days, a few really pleasant days, but more dismal, bad and downright crappy days than I ever really wanted. Some of that has been from forces beyond my control...much of it has been self-inflicted. I feel like I've gotten crankier, meaner, more negative--more jagged, if you will. (I never did fit neatly into slots, so I'm not too concerned about that. )

So I woke up on Sunday, the day after my birthday, and decided 41 needs to be different if at all possible. I did great being positive on Sunday--I didn't leave the house all day and I watched old TV shows and did a bunch of research online. Easy peasy!

Monday I did great till late afternoon, when I got a big disappointment and then in the evening, had an anxious conversation with a friend. Suddenly I was feeling snappish and angry again. Todd said, "It's easy to be positive when there's nothing challenging you." So I stomped on his big toe. Kidding!

Today has been a mixed bag. I might have yelled at the neighbor across the ravine that they needed to keep their dogs quiet. In my defense, one of their dogs sounds exactly like a very loud, very hysterical squeaky toy. On the other hand, I said a few nice things to a few friends, and had a couple nice things said back to me. Plus, I got a bunch of laundry done. Tomorrow I'll go for an unmixed bag of positivity, I swear.

Here's a picture of me on my 41st birthday, enjoying a blissful cup of morning coffee at our neighborhood dive, which serves the best and cheapest breakfasts in town. I look pretty positive here, but then--I'm holding a cup of coffee, after all.

Stripey Christmas tree.

2011-10-23T18:40:00.006-04:00

I've been playing with scraps and thought I'd share my Christmas card prototype.

I cut a whole bunch of strips of Basic Grey Christmas paper. The nice thing about most of BG's Christmas collections is that you can mix and match from year to year. And I have years and years' worth, believe me. I varied the width of the strips from 1/4" to 3/4" and every size in between. (It helps to make lots of strips of each size...that way if one strip doesn't reach the whole way across the paper, you can find another one the same width to put next to it.)

Then I ran a piece of cardstock through my Xyron machine to apply a solid coat of adhesive on one side. And I started laying strips down on the adhesive, scooching them up nice and tight against each other. I used 8.5x11" cardstock and ran the strips across the short side.

From this new sheet of striped paper, I cut a bunch of triangles that measured 2.5" at the base, and 3.5" tall. Then I cut each triangle in half lengthwise. When you have an assortment of triangles cut, put two halves together that are cut from different sections of the paper--so that they don't match up.

I rubbed distress ink on the edges of each half (Frayed Burlap) and mounted on a patterned paper background. Then I added a trunk (snipped from a brown scrap of Basic Grey paper so there's a subtle pattern) and a star and a stamped sentiment. Now I just need to make a few dozen of them!

The calm after the storm.

2011-08-30T07:48:00.010-04:00

So it's been five weeks since I was blithely making grilled cheese sandwiches for supper and got a call from my sister that our dad was being life-flighted to Aultman Hospital in Canton, with bleeding in his brain.

The bleeding turned out to be a growth, one that was wrapped around a ventricle in the base of his brain, one that was too dangerous to biopsy, and which required testing virtually every other system of his body in order to try to find other cancerous areas that could be biopsied.

I was able to catch a ride to Ohio with my aunt Kathy and uncle Bill, who had been vacationing in the Outer Banks, and I got home in time to sort of "trade off" with my brother who had been there for two days and was leaving to head for a belated vacation with his family. My sister lives down the road from my folks, so she'd been dealing with everything from the start. She and I went together with Mom to the hospital the first day I was home, and she showed me where the coffee machine was, the lounge, the cafeteria--I felt like an employee on the first day of a new job.

The next three days, I took Mom to the hospital by myself and it was then that I rather rapidly started to fall apart. Well, the falling apart started on the first day I was home, but when it was just me and my mom driving to that hospital an hour away and sitting with my dad...that was when I started to crash.

We weren't even alone that much--we had some visitors, and my sister came out in the afternoons after work, and there were always doctors, nurses and other staff in and out. But for me, it was the first time I had ever had to "be there" for my parents, and I felt like a child in dress-up clothes who has just been told to do some impossibly grown-up task, like drive a car or cook a gourmet meal. It seems ridiculous to feel that way at 40 years old, but I did.

From the time I got home, I couldn't eat or sleep, and finally crashed on Monday night, went to the ER, got some anxiety medication--which I couldn't take till the next night, since I had to be able to drive Mom to the hospital. My anxiety was about more than just Dad's health, it was about Dad's attitude and my response to it. In a nutshell, he had a very bad, very irrational response when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer seven years ago, and I couldn't face it happening again.

I have a good relationship with my dad, but it's complex, too, and there are things about him that really push my emotional buttons. So I just had this boiling stew of worry and anger and dread and fear and grief and anything else you'd care to name churning around inside me, and...let's just say that it was a blessing beyond measure when I was able to take that first Ativan on Tuesday night and feel some of that churning drop down to a lower level. It was still there, but I wasn't drowning in it.

From that point on, things got better. Wednesday, Dad was released. They still didn't know what was wrong with him, but it boosted all of us to have him back at home. I went out to pick up his meds that afternoon, and came back to find him and Mom in the kitchen, cooking up a stir-fry for supper, just basking in the normalcy and joy of it, and I was so glad.

At the end of the week, I caught another ride back to Virginia with my cousin Alan, who had come up for our annual family reunion (which I hadn't planned to attend, but was able to because of all this.) Six hours of conversation with Alan in the car about wonderful normal things helped me decompress from my week at home.

In fact, when I got home, I terribly missed all the people I'd been talking to, and all the talking I'd been doing. The whole week, I was on my cell phone talking, talking, talking to my sister, my brother, my sister-in-law, my aunts, my mother-in-law...and talking in person to my aunt Molly and my mom. That and the Ativan was what kept me going.

My aunts Carol and Kathy both gave me a safe place to vent and say what I needed to say, and Kathy and my sister-in-law Tracy really helped me come to an emotional place that I needed to come to, a place of true compassion for my dad. My aunt Molly was a rock for me that whole week--she fed me, hugged me, listened to me, counseled me, gave me a safe place to just sit and be. My mother-in-law prayed for me over the phone and I was able to instantly see the results of her prayers. I had so many people holding me up that week and I am so grateful.

And I was able to have a couple of very honest moments with my dad. I felt like I was finally able to give him the understanding that he needed. It helped me a lot, and he told me it helped him, too.

So I came home and walked around in a fog for a couple of weeks, wondering what had happened and what would happen and what path would I personally take from there. It was surreal to be plunged into a terrible crisis and then drive right out of it and come home to my regular life, where nothing had changed except me. I'm still processing all of that.

Most people who might be reading this know the happy twist at the end. Dad has been feeling good since he came home from the hospital. He was medicated for his dizziness and also for his depression, and both the meds, and I think, just getting back to his daily life, made him feel tremendously positive and good. And of course, we've all been delighted that he's feeling so good.

Last Monday, he had another MRI, to check the growth, and on Thursday he met with his oncologist. The oncologist told him that the growth--or whatever it was--is GONE. Whatever it was that was showing up in those scans--and through this whole thing, the oncologist has been very careful not to use the word "cancer"--but whatever it was, it isn't there any more.

To say we're all relieved, thrilled, humbled, grateful, doesn't even begin to express it. Five weeks ago, I was very afraid that my dad was going to die. Just last Monday I sent him a card for his 63rd birthday and wondered deep down if I would be sending him a card for his 64th.

Dad is still dizzy, though he says it's not as bad as it was earlier this summer. But he can function normally, he can drive, and he can go back to work. Some of the scans showed tremendous arthritis in his neck and shoulders, and that may be what is causing--and has caused (?)--his dizziness. I would certainly like to know what the meaning was of the thing that showed up on all those CAT scans and MRIs...but if it stays away forever, then I am content not to know.

Dad will, of course, have another follow-up MRI in six weeks, and I'm hoping something can be done to address his remaining dizziness. There is still more to this journey, though it doesn't look bleak now. When Dad was in the hospital having test after test with no real answers, I told Mom that it was like we were in a car with the gear in neutral, looking at a whole array of roads in front of us, and we were just waiting for someone to put the car in gear and move us down a road. So now we've finally done it, we've started down a road and the view is better than we dared to hope for.

When my mom called me with the good news on Thursday, I had been spending the day preparing for a different kind of storm, Hurricane Irene. She blew into town on Saturday morning and sent a tree limb through the roof of our woodshed just like a spear, but that woodshed is the ugliest thing in the world and slated to come down someday, anyway. We were without power for just under 48 hours, and that was that--for us, anyway. It's been a different story for lots of other people. A little boy here in our town was crushed in his own home by a falling tree on Saturday morning...that's the kind of tragedy you just can't understand.

Some people feel like Hurricane Irene was hyped too much, but I appreciated the hype! I appreciated knowing what was coming at me and if it was getting stronger or weaker. As it turned out, it was weaker than predicted at the beginning of the week, but it was still bad enough.

So...a storm comes at you. You try to prepare, but you know there's no way to prepare if it really turns out to be a horrible one. It blows through your life, churns things around, and leaves you a little battered but deeply grateful that it wasn't worse--and deeply mindful that it is worse for many, many other people, every day. That's been the theme of the month of August. Here's hoping September is storm-free!

Tuesday morning update.

2011-08-09T06:48:00.009-04:00

I feel like I could write a book about the past ten days of our lives, and the story is still not over yet!

Dad was able to leave the hospital last Wednesday and come home, which made him thrilled as well as the rest of us. He plunged right in to working in his garden and starting the summer canning and freezing process that was interrupted by his sickness and hospital stay. He's able to compensate for his dizziness, and the various medications he's taking are helping with that, too and with the headaches.

Dad went back for an appointment with his oncologist yesterday and the verdict was that lymphoma has definitely been ruled out, just as cancer has been ruled out in all of Dad's other system: lungs, stomach, spine, etc.. Dr. Friedman at Duke University seems to be as stymied by Dad's scans as the doctors at home are, but he feels that Dad should get on with his normal life and have regular scans and monitoring. Perhaps at some point the growth in his brain will be able to be biopsied and treated, we don't know.

Still so many unanswered questions, but for right now this is a great outcome. Dad is not a person to be patient with spending large amounts of time in hospitals. He is not a person to be patient with a long, drawn-out treatment program. The best thing in the world for him is to be able to just live his everyday life, and if that's what the doctors want him to do right now, so much the better.

Right now Dad can work in his garden, put up his summer produce, putter in his garage, enjoy the company of his grandkids, and most of all, be with my mom, who loves him so very much. A week ago--two weeks ago--we didn't know if any of those things would ever happen again. He is feeling positive and energetic (hopefully that will last as they lessen his steroid dose) and I say more power to him!

We still don't know where this path we're all on will lead us, but God has been faithful to us these past weeks, and I can't help but believe that he will continue to be faithful and provide for us as he has been doing all along. We are so grateful. Thank you to all of you who have prayed and who will continue to pray--your prayers have been an almost physical presence to us, an army standing right at our backs in support, and we have seen their results in so many ways, both large and small.

Wednesday morning update

2011-08-03T06:48:00.005-04:00

Yesterday we were able to find out the results of a spinal tap Dad had on Monday. The white blood cell count in his spinal fluid is up a little--not a lot, but enough to be a flag. The oncologist said this could indicate lymphoma. He thought he would have more information for us later in the day from some of the other tests, but though we waited all day, nothing had come through by the end of the day. This was very hard.

Mom and I are heading out this morning and meeting with the oncologist at 9 AM. I'm not expecting that he'll have much more to tell us, but we are expecting to be able to bring Dad home today. It seems like the tests are pretty much done, and now it's just waiting for the information to slowly--so slowly--trickle in. Then we can go on from there.

Again, we are just surrounded with angels in human form who are helping us in every way that they can. We are so grateful.

Update on Dad.

2011-08-01T06:53:00.004-04:00

Dad was life-flighted to Aultman Hospital in Canton last Wednesday afternoon, with what appeared to be bleeding in his brain. The next day we were told that he has a mass in his brain. That feels like five weeks ago instead of five days ago.

As of Monday morning, this is where we stand. The doctors are frankly puzzled. The mass in Dad's brain is not presenting like a typical tumor. It's in a spot that's too dangerous even to biopsy. So on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Dad's been having a series of MRIs and MRAs to try to find places elsewhere in his body that can be biopsied--cancer in other spots. A few odd spots have turned up, but nothing that's even large enough to biopsy, and as far as I can tell, nothing that appears to be cancerous.

Yesterday afternoon we met with the oncologist. He is going to send Dad's scans to a top neurosurgeon at Duke University to see what he thinks. It was a little discouraging, because that was really the only option he presented at this point. I think Dad has them stumped.

None of the doctors has said the word "cancer" yet. They are still not 100% positive that that's what it is. They've also found that there is no bleeding in Dad's brain. With every new tidbit of information, we don't know whether to feel hopeful or more fearful.

Dad is ready to get out of the hospital and come home. He's hanging on, but he's having a very hard time staying patient and keeping it together. Honestly, we all are.

Dad is getting excellent care from the nurses and doctors at Aultmen, and we have all been just blanketed with love and help from our extended family and our friends. I have felt literally surrounded with prayers and it is helping me to cope. I feel completely inadequate to deal with this situation and to provide the right help to my parents...but I can feel myself being held up by invisible arms. Please, keep praying.

Mom is doing okay, my sister and brother are doing okay. We've fallen apart a few times, but we are doing okay. Please hold us all in your prayers, and also my brother-in-law and my niece and nephew, my sister-in-law and my two nieces, and Todd. Thank you all so much.

Stitchery.

2011-06-11T16:26:00.007-04:00

I did a little digging around in the closet today and unearthed these fairy cross-stitch pieces. I stitched them when we were living in Idaho, which makes them at least 15 years old. I was more into cutesy designs back then, but after I stitched them and found them frames, they just hung out in various closets.

I had a brainwave a few months ago, realizing that my nieces Natalie and Marissa have a fairy-themed bedroom now, and hmm...that might be my chance to unload these little darlings! How perfect. We're going to see them tomorrow for Marissa's birthday and the fairies are coming along.

It's so odd to pick up an old piece that was stitched ages ago and think about what my life was like when I did it. Back then I never dreamed I would have such riches in my life--not just two nieces, but six nieces! And two nephews!

This is a piece I stitched late last year. (It needs to be re-ironed and framed better, but oh well.) Todd and I were in an antique mall in northern VA in the fall, and they had a darling cross-stitched sampler in the women's bathroom. But it was $12.00, and it was sloppily done on a very rough-weave cloth.

I've never done anything like this before, but I took a picture of it with my cell phone, and printed it out when I got home. It kind of felt like stealing, but I don't think it was...was it? The design was simple enough that it was easy to copy from the printout, and of course I did it neatly, and on a nice linen cloth. Now I just need to get it hung up.

So it's been four months since I blogged, my longest hiatus ever. It's been interesting to check in with myself every so often and see if there was anything I felt like communicating to the world at large. Every time I checked, the answer was, "Nah."

A fluctuating depression problem has contributed to that, but mostly I've just been absorbed in other things. I started Weight Watchers in February, but weight loss is not something I find interesting to talk about. Neither is depression, for that matter. I've been taking walks, and listening to books on CD. I walked a 5K in May, which was my first exposure to communal exercise since high school. It was fun.

I got to the bottom (no pun intended) of the abdominal pain I was having in January and February by having a colonoscopy in April. By that time, most of the pain had subsided, and the procedure showed that I have diverticulosis, which is no big deal. It was a relief to know that nothing serious was wrong. I've been taking a probiotic supplement, and that, along with a better diet, seems to have helped a lot.

I've done some stitching, a little cross-stitch--the first I've done in years--and a little embroidery. I spent a week at home in Ohio in May, hanging out with my parents and other family, which was really great. Time with loved ones feels like such a luxury when you spend your life so far away.

I even got some scrapbooking done--went down to Beach Scrapbooks in Virginia Beach and took advantage of a couple of their day-long crops. That was in March and April, and I'm dying to get some more done. I never dreamed I'd be a traveling scrapper--I always hated packing up for crops--but at this stage of my life, it seems to be the best option.

We're into our horrific hot humid (HHH) summer weather now, so I'm trying to think of more indoor projects to tide me over till fall when I can emerge into the outdoors again. Might be time to clean out under the bathroom sinks, or wash all the curtains, or create a complex shelving system for my books or something. Who knows what mischief I can find this summer?

Small pleasures.

2011-02-09T11:45:00.005-05:00

Late winter is a time of small pleasures. When it's cold and gray and (depending on where you live) snowy, and maybe you're not leaving the house as much, and not being as active as you are in the spring, summer and fall, it's a good time to notice little things that can make you smile or give you a pleased sensation, which is what you hang onto to get you through till spring. (Whew, that was a long sentence.)

Here are a few of my small pleasures right now:

--Gain HE detergent--in lavender! I love Gain, but they've only ever made their high-efficiency detergent in the original scent. Which is nice, but sometimes you long for a new smell. I was so happy to find a lavender scent at Wal-Mart the other day (it almost made going to Wal-Mart feel worthwhile!) Plus, they have a lavender fabric softener. My sheets are tumbling in the dryer right now and giving off a wonderful aroma.

--Craig Ferguson. I've seen lots of clips of "The Late Late Show" on Youtube and CBS.com, and I read Craig's memoir a few months ago, so I've been a casual fan for a while. I've been up late a lot of nights this past month with stomach pain and general anxiety-based insomnia, and so I've gotten to see Craig in real time. And I love this guy. He is ridiculous and goofy, but somehow that goes down better at 1:00 in the morning. And his interviews are a delight. He is really interested in everyone who comes on the show and always manages to make them come off as funny and interesting. And that accent! Love him.

--"Talking" greeting cards. I don't buy greeting cards with those audio chips in them very often, but every now and then I find one that's perfect. I was shopping for Valentine's cards for my nephews and nieces the other day, and I found the perfect one for my 13-year-old nephew. The front says "This little card isn't meant to embarrass you..." and then when you open it this very high-pitched woman's voice shrieks, "Hi, honey! Hi! Guess who wuvs you? I do!" It makes me laugh every time I open it, and it makes me laugh when I picture Tanner's face when he'll open it. I highly recommend this card if you have a teenage boy.

--Sharpie pens. More accurately: Sharpie / Pen. They're bleed-proof permanent pens with a clickie top. I picked them up at Walgreens and they are the black pen I've always dreamed of! Yes, I dream of pens. Don't judge me.

--Ella and Louis. I mean, Ella and Louis. In my continuing quest to become a senior citizen before my time, I've really gotten into jazz/swing/big band music. Pandora is invaluable for stepping outside your musical rut, because it's a great way to hear a lot of an unfamiliar genre without having to buy a bunch of albums. And then if you hear something you love, then you can track it to Amazon and snatch it up. I was cleaning out the fridge a couple weeks ago and listening to my "Bing Crosby" station on Pandora, which pulls up tons of other stuff beyond Bing, and "Isn't This a Lovely Day?" came on, and I literally stopped what I was doing to listen. I had to buy the CD because this track is not available as an mp3, so I used the Amazon gift card my parents gave me for Christmas. What a great purchase.

What are your small pleasures this winter?

What's wrong with aging gracefully?

2011-02-01T22:47:00.006-05:00

I have a morbid fascination with celebrity plastic surgery. Whenever we see an older celeb on TV or in the movies, I'm always searching their faces, looking for the signs. Usually you don't have to look too far--sometimes it slaps you right in your own face. I've never gotten over whatever it was that Steve Martin did to his wonderful eyes ten or twelve years ago; they're a good inch farther apart than they used to be.

Several months ago we went to see a very good movie called "Easy A" which starred young Emma Stone, who is a favorite of ours, and which also starred the not-so-young Patricia Clarkson (age 51) and Lisa Kudrow (age 47.) In all of Clarkson's and Kudrow's scenes, I kept staring at their faces and marveling at how natural and wonderful they each looked.

They each have some wrinkles, but it works for them. They don't have weird cheekbones, their eyes aren't too far apart. Clarkson in particular just glowed on-screen, and I understand they have make-up and lighting people to make them look good, but her face still looks natural.

I think both ladies looked even better to me because we had just sat through a preview for the movie "Burlesque," starring Cher, whom I hadn't seen on-screen in quite a long time.

To be fair to Cher, she is 64 years old, older than Kudrow and Clarkson. And when you find a picture of her where she's holding her face still, she can almost look normal--not 64 years old, but not quite a circus freak yet. But watching her try to move her mouth and talk through all that filler in her face was frankly horrifying.

All this came back into my memory tonight when I was watching this show on PBS called "Pioneers of Television." I've only managed to catch a couple episodes of this, but they take a TV genre and go back and look at some of the key shows and interview whatever stars they can find who are still alive and relatively coherent. It's fun and nostalgic.

Tonight the topic was crime dramas, and there were three women who were interviewed for this show who made me wonder all over again how it is that we've bought into this belief that loads of plastic surgery are the only way we can hang onto the illusion of youth--and that youth is an illusion worth hanging onto in the first place.

Barbara Bain was drop-dead gorgeous 40 years ago, playing a covert agent on "Mission: Impossible." Now she's 81 years old, and I think she still looks terrific.

My mom always used to tease my dad about Angie Dickinson--apparently he had a little crush on her when she was on "Policewoman" back in the 70s. She was beautiful then:

And I think she's held up pretty darn well for someone pushing 80:

And then there was Stefanie Powers, who starred in a goofy little show called "The Girl from UNCLE" in the mid-60's and also in "Hart to Hart" in the 80's.

She's almost 70 now and still looks amazing:

It's not that I believe none of these women have had plastic surgery. We're talking Hollywood here--I think they give you an open-ended coupon for one free procedure when you get your SAG card. In the cheekbone areas, especially, I wouldn't be surprised if all three of them have had work. But it's unobtrusive. It enhances rather than distracts. And most importantly, they left some sags and wrinkles and folds, instead of just polishing their whole face to a smooth flat surface like...well...

I also don't think plastic surgery has been kind to Meg Ryan (age 49):

Or Priscilla Presley (age 65):

To quote Helena Bonham Carter (age 44 and un-plastic surgeried): "You have two choices. You can have the work done and look weirder, or have nothing done and look older. I think the only way I’ll continue to get work is if I don’t get anything done…I can still move all my face muscles! There aren’t many who can still do that."

I think I'd rather look old than weird. Ask me again in 20 years, and I may choose differently, but I think old is okay. And there are so many beautiful older women! They're older, they own it, and their faces are still beautiful. I love being able to see a person's life in their face, not their surgeries.

Checking in.

2011-01-28T15:14:00.003-05:00

Can I just say that I am ready for January to be OVER. And for February to be BETTER.

I have been "not myself" this month. First off was the previously mentioned broken toe, then a bout with diverticulitis, which is an infection of the bowel, which required some heavy-duty antibiotics, which made me feel lousy on top of the pain and general lousiness of the infection. And then back pain, which was diagnosed as a problem with my sacroiliac joint, and then more stomach pain, which put me back on antibiotics and then in for a CT scan this week which didn't really help with anything.

I am scheduled for an appointment with a GI doctor in a few weeks, but right now my theory is that it's the antibiotics that are causing this lingering stomach pain. So I am waiting for those to leave my system and then we'll see how the tummy feels. I'm really hoping for an improvement soon.

This has all been very frustrating because I am a naturally anxious person, and being sick and having pain makes me feel even more anxious. Which makes it hard for me to sleep. So throw in a bunch of messed-up sleepless nights and the fact that it's cold and the sun isn't shining and I haven't felt much like doing anything beyond the basics of keeping the household running and my stomach hurts, which makes me feel worried, which makes my stomach hurt even more...urgh. I really, really hate it, and certainly haven't felt like blogging about it. This has been one of my more miserable months of recent memory.

I'm trying right now to get my life back on track, focus on things other than my stomach, eat what I need to be eating, get some fresh air and exercise, and just generally try to work my way out of this web of anxiety and aggravation into a more positive feeling, which will hopefully in turn help my stomach feel better, too. I don't like to whine on my blog, but this month has been really not fun. Any good thoughts you can spare, I could use them!

Normal.

2011-01-03T13:39:00.006-05:00

I do love that first "normal" day after the holidays are over, when life settles back down into its routine. We've had a little bit of weirdness to go along with the holiday whirl, too. Our "new" car went into the shop on the 22nd to have some things worked on (nothing unexpected--we'd planned for the maintenance work to be done.) We took the other car home to Ohio on the 23rd and stayed there till the 27th. Had a really, really nice Christmas. Just very laid-back and enjoyable.

We came home to about eight inches of snow that had fallen while we were gone (VERY unusual for this area) so there was some shoveling that had to be done, and Todd got two unexpected days off work as NASA closed for the weather.

Our car still wasn't done, so I hung out on Tuesday and Wednesday, getting Christmas presents put away, cleaning and (insert ominous music here) doing laundry. It was while bringing my last load of laundry downstairs on Wednesday afternoon that I slipped and fell at the bottom of the stairs, jamming my foot under the open front door and re-breaking my left middle toe that I broke on a dresser leg in the wee hours several years ago.

On Thursday morning Todd woke up with a major recurrence of the eye pain that had been bothering him off and on for the past week. He went to the optometrist that afternoon, who sent him straight to the ophthalmologist, informing him that he had a torn cornea in his left eye. The ophthalmologist also informed him that his right cornea was badly abraded and that it would have been just a matter of time before that one was torn, too. She said his corneas looked like knees when you fall and scrape and tear them up on a sidewalk.

We're not quite sure what caused the tearing--the assumption is that it's a combination of dry heat and dry cold weather, plus his contact lenses (which allowed the abrasions to heal and then re-tear when he took them out and went to sleep) and maybe also his blood pressure medicine which is diuretic and may be drying out his poor eyeballs.

So the past few days have been very focused on getting the proper drops into Todd's eyes at frequent intervals. My toe has been buddy-taped to the toe next to it, and I have been alternately limping around and sitting with my foot up on pillows.

My brother and his family came on Friday for New Year's and we had a great time with them, with eye drops and limping mixed in just for fun. Oh, and I finally got my car back on Friday. Saturday and Sunday we hung out, played games, ate garbage, and just relaxed. Well, the grown-ups relaxed...my nieces are very much into playing "kitten and puppy," which is just as energetic and full of scratches and rough-housing (and crying when the scratching and rough-housing reaches its inevitable conclusion) as it sounds.

I'm still not at full walking capacity yet, but Todd's eye is healing beautifully, although his days of wearing contact lenses may be over, at least for a while. Today Todd is back at work, and I'm back into my routine, too, with time taken out for the occasional foot-raising on pillows, with an Advil chaser.

2010-12-29T11:22:00.007-05:00

We had a great, if short, time at home--spent Christmas Eve with Todd's parents, Christmas Day with my family, and Boxing Day with my extended family. Monday we drove home, curious to see how much snow our house was blanketed in, since it had snowed all day Sunday along the East Coast. A little of it had melted by the time we got home, but there was still 6 or 8 inches left. Todd ended up with an extra day off, because NASA was closed Monday and Tuesday, so today he headed back to work and I started tackling the mountain of laundry that always seems to come from trips away, no matter how short they are.

The last three pages of my 2010 Christmas journal:

Ho ho ho!

2010-12-23T08:05:00.005-05:00

We're heading for Ohio today...hoping for safe travels and no bad weather. Since my ability and time for Internet is usually limited when I'm up there, I'll say it now: Merry Christmas to all!

2010-12-21T15:02:00.004-05:00

The Christmas journal entry for the 20th is always about unexpected surprises, and I got a great one yesterday. Living in my little oblivious bubble, I didn't find out till yesterday morning that there was going to be a lunar eclipse last night. I drank some extra tea so I could stay awake and see it.

It was so cold out, I had to pop in and out through the whole thing, staying out for a few minutes, then going back in for ten or fifteen minutes, then running back out. I used Todd's binoculars, which definitely improved the experience, but I was wishing for a telescope, too!

The moon didn't turn as red in totality here as it did elsewhere in the world--I guess we don't have as much air pollution here, or volcanic ash, either, which I'd heard was also going to affect the color. To the naked eye, the moon looked brownish-red; with the binoculars, it looked gray with a pale turquoise edge. Just beautiful.

[The photo is not mine, it came from the NASA slideshow of the eclipse with pictures from all over the world.)

2010-12-20T14:34:00.004-05:00

More snow!

2010-12-16T11:39:00.005-05:00

We're in the midst of a snowstorm this morning--the first I've ever seen in December in this area. We're supposed to get 3-5 inches of snow, which is almost unheard of. Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and warmer, so we'll see how long this white stuff sticks around. It certainly is pretty. I love watching the snow fall, and it happens so seldom here, it really is a treat.

Todd's office is shutting down at noon so he'll be home soon. And I'm doing some laundry, cleaning the kitchen, and working on a few projects, including today's journal entry. Seems like a good day to stay warm inside and count your blessings.

Brrrrrrr.

2010-12-15T15:04:00.004-05:00

Oh my gravy, is it cold here. I know it's nothing compared to the northern climes, but 30 degrees and a 25-mph wind is plenty cold for me! I went out shopping for hours yesterday (it was in the 20s yesterday) and got blown all over every parking lot in town. I also had to chase down a cart that blew out of the cart corral not once but twice before I just parked it on one of those mulched curbs with the little bushes.

I'm 95% done with my holiday shopping, just a few odds and ends left. But today I'm staying inside and keeping warm with other chores!

Today's journal entry is about holiday visiting, plus a random picture I didn't know what else to do with...

2010-12-14T14:43:00.002-05:00

Snowy snow.

2010-12-13T13:09:00.003-05:00

We're actually getting a bit of snow here this morning, the tail end, I suppose, of what's been blowing through the Midwest this past weekend. It's very pretty but it's derailed my Christmas and grocery shopping plans for today. I'm paranoid about going out in any kind of bad weather right now, because we've had two collisions in two months and I don't want to tempt fate and have Allstate drop us like a hot potato!

Have I written about our collisions? Todd rear-ended someone on his way to work at the beginning of October while driving my car...and then rear-ended someone two weeks ago on his way to work while driving his car. My car was fixable, his was not. We spent about a week looking for a "new" (used) car and trying to figure out which of our cars we should try to replace: the primary (better) car that I drive or the secondary (worse) car that he drives? Usually when we replace a car, we replace the primary car, and the once-primary car moves to secondary status, and that's what we decided to do this time, too.

We found a 2002 VW Passat wagon a week ago for me to drive. We weren't planning to buy another VW (our other car is also a VW Passat wagon) but nothing we drove felt as solid and well-constructed as our Passat. So we just got another one.

All that is my long-winded way of saying that if the roads are the slightest bit hinky, I'm not going to be on them unless it's a life or death situation. Which so far it's not, although I may end up starving to death if I don't get some groceries soon!

My journal entry for today:

2010-12-12T12:52:00.001-05:00

2010-12-11T14:02:00.002-05:00

2010-12-09T13:57:00.001-05:00

2010-12-08T15:51:00.001-05:00

2010-12-07T11:42:00.002-05:00

2010-12-06T10:50:00.001-05:00

2010-12-05T11:00:00.002-05:00

Journal pages 3 and 4.

2010-12-04T13:43:00.004-05:00

Julia's kitchen.

2010-12-03T11:56:00.009-05:00

So we went to DC on Thanksgiving, and we took a tour at the Air and Space Museum, and saw the Norman Rockwell exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art but this was my favorite thing.

We went to the American History Museum at the end of the day that day. I haven't been there since I was a teenager, but I don't remember it being such an oppressive place. The whole building feels like it should be filled with IRS pod-people pecking at computers, or guys in uniforms plotting a nuclear strike. The National Gallery is so lovely, and at the Air and Space Museum you walk right into a two-story gallery full of planes and rockets and space capsules...and at the American History museum, all there is to look at is stuff with boring captions in glass cases in dark tiny rooms.

Thank goodness they've hung onto the Julia Child exhibit, because it was the one of the few things I saw there that exuded any warmth, humanity or real historical interest.

I wasn't even especially interested in seeing Julia Child's kitchen, because it seemed like kind of a cliched thing to pay homage to her after Amy Adams did it so sappily in "Julie and Julia." But as with most things Julia, it just welcomes you right in and makes you smile.

They have a TV set up that plays an endless loop of Julia's cooking segments, from the 1960s through the 1990s, and it was surrounded by an appreciative crowd most of the time we were there.

It was oddly fascinating to peek at her kitchen and see what kinds of utensils she used, what kinds of magnets were on her fridge, what cookbooks were on her shelves. It's a very welcoming-looking kitchen; you can almost see all the people who must have cooked and eaten there over the years, moving around inside.

I don't really remember ever seeing Julia Child on TV--in my memory she was mostly just "that lady who talks funny"--but four or five years ago I read her book My Life in France and she became one of my heroes, which isn't a word I throw around lightly. She got excited about life and what it had to offer, and she was always eager to learn. I love that attitude.

2010-12-03T08:41:00.001-05:00

2010-12-02T13:27:00.006-05:00

It's that time of year again, time for the Journal Your Christmas class. Here's my December 1 entry.

Here's the album, an 8x8" binder from Making Memories.

And here's the detail in the little window in the center:

I'm frankly amazed I found the energy to sit down and do this last night, because I am beat! Monday and Tuesday we moved everything out of the living room and dining room and I painted the living room. Yesterday the new carpet went in and we started moving things back in. I'm continuing to move things back in today. It sounds simple enough, but when you have nice new carpet, you want to make sure everything's dusted and clean before it goes back in, you want to sort through things and toss stuff you don't need or want--it's a lot of shuffling around.

Plus, I have about 8000 books in the living room...here's where I had to stash them on Sunday!

It's ridiculous. I've been going through them as I put them back and getting rid of a few. Not enough, but every little bit helps. What can I say? I love my books! Except when I have to move them!

I am head over heels in love with my new carpet. The old carpet was, I believe, original to the house, which would make it 23 years old. It had the standard builder's grade pad underneath, about 1/4" thick. It was dirty, matted berber and it smelled like the previous owner's dogs whenever the weather was damp. We tried to have it cleaned a couple of times, but it never really helped. When the carpet guys pulled it up, you could see all these liquid stains on the subfloor...I don't even want to know what those were, although I can guess. Ick.

The new carpet is feathery soft under the feet, with a 1/2" thick water-resistant pad. It's sort of a mottled light brown, what the carpet people call a frise, I think, with lots of thin crinkly fibers. I am in love!

But I'm so pooped I have to keep resisting the urge to just lay down on it and fall asleep, like that baby in the commercial!

Garage sale finds.

2010-11-27T11:17:00.013-05:00

Two weeks ago, when my father-in-law John and my brother-in-law Tony were visiting us for some fishing, we all piled into Tony's SUV on Saturday morning and ventured out in search of garage sales.

Luxuriating in the spacious leather back seat of an SUV while someone else drives (Tony) and someone else navigates (Todd) is truly the way to go garage saling. Plus, I had one of my best sale days ever.

I got all three of these recipe booklets for 25 cents. The one on the left was compiled by a local woman 15 years ago and has all her favorite family recipes in it. The Pillsbury Bake-Off booklet is falling apart and very well-used, and no wonder--there are a whole pile of mouth-watering recipes in it.

For $1.00, I got a Girl Scout manual from the late 1940s that has the cutest illustrations, and lots of useful information about knots and table settings and such things.

I got a big pile of vintage ornaments for about $3.00. They're not the fancy kind with images on them (those are my favorite) but they'll work very well as filler on my tree.

I also got a giant wicker basket that I'm wondering what to use it for now that I have it ($1.00) and a scanner. And I found an amp for my friend Matthew's new electric guitar.

But the best find was these chairs:

In this spot in our living room I have had two small Ikea armchairs with white duck slipcovers, which we've had for about 8 years. We've had small living rooms ever since we bought them and they've been perfect for each one.

But they were very boxy and plain, in true Ikea style. And visually, they took up a lot of space. So when I spotted these vintage yellow armchairs in the front yard at an estate sale, I snatched them up for $45 for the pair. Don't they look great? They're small and they fit into the room very nicely. They're not cushy, but they're comfortable. And the upholstery is in great shape. I'm just delighted with them, and my mother-in-law has laid claim to my old chairs, so everyone's happy.

Now if I can just figure out how to get Tony and John to come back down every couple weeks next spring to drive me around and bring me good luck again!

P.S. I think I came off sounding pathetic in my previous post, and that wasn't what I intended! We had the option of spending Thanksgiving with my brother three hours away, or we could have flown up to my husband's family get-together in Columbus. Running up to DC for a day at the museums just seemed more manageable (and affordable), and there was a Norman Rockwell exhibit I especially wanted to see. So we had a very nice day and a tasty meal (with no clean-up afterwards!) I just wish my family was a few minutes away instead of a bunch of hours.

2010-11-26T23:29:00.006-05:00

Hope everybody had a fun Thanksgiving! We weren't up for doing any major traveling this year, so we just made a run up to Washington D.C. and cruised through a few museums, and then ate Thanksgiving dinner at Old Country Buffet (we managed to get there right before the stuffing pan got cleaned out, so, whew! Crisis averted! It wouldn't have been pretty if I'd had to eat Thanksgiving dinner with no stuffing.)

My sister and I were talking on the phone today and realized that we both have high expectations of holidays, which often leads us to feel sad or let down. I was feeling sad on Wednesday hearing people talk about what they were going to cook, who was coming to their house, etc., knowing I'd be eating dinner in a restaurant. But most years it's just not feasible or desirable to sit in a car or on a plane for hours for every single major holiday. So Todd and I have spent more holidays alone than I would like.

My theory is that since my sister and I grew up with lots of extended family around, it just doesn't seem like a holiday to us unless there are a lot of people crammed into a house all talking at the same time and drinking coffee and playing games and teasing each other. When it's just you and your husband staring at each other across the table (or in my sister's case this year, her and her husband staring at each other while the kids played games on their phones) something feels wrong.

On the other hand, when you see people sitting and eating their restaurant turkey dinner absolutely alone--and she and I both saw people who were all alone--then you realize how much you have to be grateful for, even when things don't turn out exactly the way you pictured they would when you were a kid and thought every holiday would always be the same forever and ever.

Speaking of family, I ran across something today that took me back across the decades in a flash. April Winchell runs a site called Regretsy, which spotlights some of the worst arts and crafts from the crafters' sales site Etsy. She and her readers regularly make me snort or choke on whatever I'm drinking...they are seriously funny people.

April linked to her list of horrible holiday mp3s the other day and I just discovered a little gem on the list called "I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas" by a guy named Yogi Yorgesson, who was the alter ego of a comedian and radio personality named Harry Stewart in the 1940s and 50s.

When I was a kid, my grandpa Martin would make 8-track tapes for me and my siblings. Sometimes he would tape records for us, but other times I think he'd just tape whatever he found on the radio. I can't remember much of what was on the tapes, except for "I Yust Go Nuts" and some Italian song that I actually heard at an Italian restaurant a few months ago--the first time I'd heard it in 30+ years.

"I Yust Go Nuts" is like a brain worm, or it was for a kid who memorized a lot of random things, which I did whether I wanted to or not, because my brain just latched onto stuff. To this day, every now and then I'll think "And just at that moment someone slugs Uncle Ben" or "I step on a skate and fall over a tricycle."

If you listen to the song--and why wouldn't you want to listen to such a gem?--at the bit where he sings about stepping outside for a cold glass of beer, that's where Grandpa faded the song out and skipped over the part where the guy drinks eleven "Tom and Yerrys." So in my memory, the song goes "I think I'll step out for a cold glahh uhh bbb..." and then picks up again when the kids are jumping on his belly. I guess Grandpa didn't want us little kids to hear about some Swedish guy getting hammered on Christmas Eve, although he didn't have any problem with us hearing about the ensuing hangover on Christmas morning. What a funny little memory. Thanks for letting me hear the whole song, April!

More Florida.

2010-11-24T09:16:00.017-05:00

Got the dining room--or most of it--done, whew! I'd share a picture, but no one would be able to tell a difference. Todd couldn't when he got home! All I did was cover that shiny finish with a slightly darker and non-shiny color. The color was originally Laura Ashley Pale Apple 2, and now it's Valspar Soothing Aloe. I used Benjamin Moore Aura paint, since it's got primer in it and can go over semi-gloss without having to treat it or sand it or anything else time-consuming. What fantastic paint! It goes on like butter!

Next week we'll move everything out of the living room and I'll re-paint three of the walls in a hurry before the carpet guys come on Wednesday. (The other wall was re-painted a year ago when Todd put in our new mantel.) By next weekend I hope to have some of the chaos in my home put back into place, but for now every room is a hot mess.

Here are a few more pictures from Florida:

It was so odd to see Christmas decorations and hear Christmas music while the palm trees blew in the balmy breezes! I guess to people who live there it's no big deal, but it was odd to this Northerner.

I stopped in at this shop my first day there and got a half-gallon of fresh-squeezed juice and a huge bag of locally grown oranges. I got through all of the juice and most of the oranges by the time we left!

This made me laugh. I had totally forgotten that "I Dream of Jeannie" took place in Cocoa Beach until my friend Bev asked if I was going to find Major Nelson down there!

All I had to do to get to the beach was walk out the back door of the hotel, past the pool and a few steps over a little boardwalk. It was fantastic; I spent a couple hours out there every day. This is the Cocoa Beach pier again.

The water was cold. And the air was none too warm most days, either. The temperatures were in the upper 70s to the lower 80s but it was extremely windy. I still hopped in the water every day but the last day, though. And then shivered till the sun could warm me up a little!

On our last morning there, we went to Downtown Disney for a couple of hours before heading to the airport. It's in the Disney World area, but you don't have to pay to get in, it's just a bunch of shops and restaurants. It was the perfect place to walk around and get some sunshine before sitting in a plane for a couple of hours.

They had a cool Lego store with lots of Lego creations.

Princesses outside the World of Disney store. Inside they had a boutique where little girls could pick out a princess costume and then get all fancied up with hair-dos and make-up. I got a kick out of seeing all the little princesses running around.

We spent some time here picking out the souvenirs I was too sleepy to buy when we were at Magic Kingdom at midnight Tuesday night! They had tons of pins of all the different characters and rides, that was my favorite thing.

I loved seeing poinsettias growing in pots throughout the area.

And then we took off for the airport. It was a nice week, and I'm glad that Todd wanted me to come along with him.

Now I'm going to work on some of this messy house.

Catching up while the first coat dries.

2010-11-23T12:09:00.025-05:00

I slapped on the first coat of paint in my dining room this morning and now I'm waiting out the required four hours before I slap on the second coat. Lordy, how I hate to paint! It's not really a necessary paint job, either--I'm just putting on a satin coat over the original semi-gloss coat in a slightly more muted color. The semi-gloss has always bugged me. I was young and dumb when I decided on semi-gloss five years ago. It shows every tiny imperfection on the walls.

I scheduled the new carpet installation for next Wednesday, so this really is the right time to get that painting done. I've dripped on the old carpet a million times already. I am the world's messiest painter.

We got home from Florida on Saturday evening. It was such a relaxing week--even Todd got some relaxing in after his training class each day. This was the view off our hotel room balcony; that's the Cocoa Beach pier on the right:

I went to the Kennedy Space Center; here's their "rocket garden:"

And the Mercury Seven astronauts:

A re-creation of the old mission control room:

The space shuttle Explorer:

I took an extra tour called "Cape Canaveral: Then and Now" where we went onto the Cape Canaveral Air Force Base and visited all the old launch pads. This is the actual blockhouse and control room from which Alan Shepherd was launched into space in 1961:

When you look through the reinforced windows, you can see the launch pad and a replica of the rocket and capsule:

This is the sign on the front of the blockhouse:

This is the oldest building at Cape Canaveral and it dates back to the earliest days of the U.S. rocketry program in the late 1940s. Werner von Braun's office was here. The Cape Canaveral lighthouse is visible behind it.

The sign in front of the launch pad where John Glenn and some of the other Mercury astronauts were sent into space:

And this is the remains of Launch Complex 34 where the astronauts in Apollo 1 were killed when a fire swept through their capsule during a routine test.

Apollo 7 was the last manned launch sent up from this site and from Cape Canaveral--after that, all manned flights moved to Kennedy Space Center. Cape Canaveral is still the site for rocket launches--we were eagerly hoping to see a rocket launch while we were there, but it was scrubbed several times and we missed it. Here's the rocket on the launch pad, though--I was very excited to be that close to it!

The Cape Canaveral tour was really amazing--our tour guide was a retired high school history teacher who did a great job. Todd and I watched an excellent program called "When We Left Earth" on Netflix a couple of months ago, and it turned out to have been the perfect prelude to this tour.

Since Todd's class was at Kennedy, his co-workers dropped him off in the visitor center parking lot and I picked him up when my tour was done so that we could speed away to Orlando, an hour away, and go to Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party at the Magic Kingdom.

Neither of us had ever been to Disney World, or ever really even given it any thought, so we weren't sure what to expect. We climbed on a ferry boat to take us over to the entrance, and we could see the lights of Cinderella's castle in the distance. That was when I started feeling like a little kid!

It was extremely crowded at first as the regular visitors were leaving and the Christmas Party visitors were arriving. Really crazy. And the weather was unpleasant, extremely humid and eventually rainy. And in the dark it was hard to get any good pictures, but we did take a few:

Apart from the weather, we had a very good time. There were fireworks and a holiday parade, free cocoa, apple juice and sugar cookies throughout the park, and the lines for the rides were very short. My favorite was the "Small World" ride--I think I could have ridden it ten times! The singing kids from all over the world were so darned cute!

Then it was past midnight and we still had to get out of the park and get back to our hotel in Cocoa Beach. I drove most of the way and had to sing--loudly and badly--with the classic radio station to keep myself awake. We rolled into our hotel at 1:45 AM. It was a long day!

I've got a few more Florida pictures...I'll share them later. Time to get back to painting.....

Day 1 in Florida.

2010-11-15T21:53:00.004-05:00

I spent some time today driving up and down the tiny strip of land that is Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral, trying to get my bearings and find out what there is to do while Todd takes his class every day.

There actually isn't a lot to do...this is a somewhat isolated little beach town, leaning heavily toward restaurants, hotels, bars and strip clubs. But it's still fun to drive around and see palm trees everywhere. And I had a great lunch at a little coffeehouse and an even better dinner at a waterfront seafood restaurant where we watched the sun set. That's where the photo was taken--the only photo I took today.

Tomorrow I should do better, photo-wise--I am going to tour Kennedy Space Center all day tomorrow, and then pick up Todd when his class is done, and we'll take off for Orlando and see Mickey. It should be a really fun, really exhausting day!

Our hotel is right on the ocean, so I was able to step out to the beach this afternoon and sit in the sun for a couple of hours. The water was cold! The breeze was chilly, too, as the sun got lower. I think it was about 78 degrees here today, but cooler by the water. Tonight we walked down and watched the stars from the beach for a little while--very romantic.

November.

2010-11-12T14:26:00.005-05:00

November is such a great month--cool temperatures, leaves at their peak, Christmas things popping up in the stores, stews in the crockpot and cookies in the oven...love it. This November is proving to be more active than I'd planned. Yesterday my father-in-law John and my brother-in-law Tony (two of my favorite guys in the world) came down to spend the four-day weekend fishing with Todd. Last night was too windy for them to get out and catch anything, but they're out today and I have all my fingers crossed (except for my typing fingers) that they're having fun.

Next week Todd has a training class at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and he asked me to go along with him. So I am getting to spend all next week in Cocoa Beach, Florida. I'm excited! I've never been to Florida, and it will be fun to explore a new place. Todd will have all his evenings free, and we're hoping to go over to Orlando one night and go to Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party at Disneyworld. I hope so much that it works out! I feel like a little kid, I am so ridiculously excited at the thought of walking through Disneyworld at Christmastime.

We're also planning to make a quick trip up to Washington DC for Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday. And after that I'm going to be painting my dining room and living room in preparation for having new carpet installed. I'm beside myself with excitement about this, too. (Not the painting--the carpet! Still hate to paint, but it seems like a good time to get the walls touched up before the carpet goes in.)

And then it will be Christmastime before I know it. The last bit of the year always goes so much faster than I want it to!

Ideas.

2010-11-04T10:18:00.004-04:00

Here's an amazing holiday online magazine--I could not believe how lengthy it was and how many terrific ideas were packed into it. I only just found Amy Powers' blog a few weeks ago when another blogger linked to her fall online magazine, which is also amazing. I've found about ten things I want to try, which is about nine more than is reasonable for me!

It has been gray and cold and gloomy here for the past few days, which I don't really mind, but it does seem to sap my desire to craft or create or really do much of anything besides the regular round of chores and then sitting on the couch watching "Mission: Impossible" episodes. That show is so crazy! I love Peter Graves, he was just a giant hunk of a man, wasn't he? Martin Landau was pretty easy on the eyes way back then, too.

Oh, I found another cool site the other day, called TV Party, where they have all sorts of articles about classic TV shows. I had fun reading about the old holiday shows, especially. And this was really fascinating to me--it's the ABC fall TV promo for the 1970-71 season. I guess they used to run 30-minutes shows detailing the whole line-up for the season. I wish I could see more of them from other years, because they're like a little trip back in time. I can't quite believe that was how the world looked when I was born. It looks so familiar, and yet so very odd!

Halloween.

2010-11-01T17:14:00.004-04:00

Hope everybody had a fun Halloween! We sat on our front porch and handed out candy for a couple of hours to the usual assortment of princesses, ninjas, aliens, superheroes, and a whole class of wizards from Hogwarts School. And the most adorable, tiniest Yoda I have ever seen--I wanted to put her in my pocket and keep her forever! (She's our neighbor's daughter from across the street, and she's somewhere between 18 months and two years old; I can't exactly remember how long ago she was born. Unbelievably precious.)

I carved two jack o'lanterns on Saturday and was happy with how they came out. It's been so long since I've done anything like that, I forgot that you have to make a silhouette and you can't draw lines across anything that you're going to keep, so my first jack ended up toothless because I'd drawn lines across all his teeth!

I saved all the pumpkin seeds and fully intended to roast them, but after rinsing and rinsing and rinsing them, and finally finding one stuck to my right boob, I decided to chuck them and make Chex Mix instead. I hate food you have to work for, like pomegranates and lobster, and apparently, pumpkin seeds also fall into this group.

I have these enormous white mums growing right by the front porch steps, and last year a few kids commented on them. This year they're bigger than ever, and I also have some purple and yellow potted mums on the steps themselves. I was tickled by how many of the kids complimented me on my flowers--and how many of them were boys! One little boy was petting the flowers on one of the giant white mums like it was a dog. Kids are so funny.

Orson Scott Card.

2010-10-29T08:54:00.003-04:00

Todd and I went to hear his favorite author, Orson Scott Card, speak at Christopher Newport University last night. Card has written approximately a bajillion books, most of which Todd owns. Todd's favorite is Ender's Game, which was the first book he gave me to read while we were dating. I'm not a particular fan of Card's, but I have read four or five of his books, and liked a couple of them, but science fiction is just not my genre. Card has also written some historical novels about Biblical women and the early Mormon church, of which he's a member.

Card is great at public speaking; he's taught writing classes and lectured for years, so he has his repertoire of funny stories well-polished and he had the audience in the palm of his hand. It took me a little longer to warm up to him because he crapped all over my very favorite childhood book in the first three minutes of his talk! I was shooting eye daggers at him, but he was oblivious to their power. (The book was Julie Andrews' Mandy--he also crapped all over her acting ability. Card is an opinionated guy.)

Since his first young adult novel is coming out next month, the rough topic was writing for children--is it different from writing for adults? Should it be different? Card's argument was "no," and he launched into a list of books he loved as a child to help prove his point, books that were not written explicitly for children but which children have often loved for decades. This was where I started to warm back up to him, because it's obvious that he was a voracious--and precocious--child reader, and I was, too.

He remarked on the way that children sift through the themes and topics that are over their heads and just zero in on the story, and the way that children often learn new words, but not how to pronounce them, so that years later they learn they've been mispronouncing it all along, which was certainly true of me and of Todd, and many other kids I know who were reading well above their grade level.

His point was that a dedicated reading child can sift through a lot of what he called "twaddle," that adults won't put up with, because kids want a good story above all else and haven't learned to become impatient and jaded about books. And I know that was true of me--I vacuumed it all up, good and bad, when I was a kid.

But of course, what kids most need is a good story, just as adults are looking for a good story. He made an interesting comment that even people who don't read are still looking for stories, that we all seek out stories, even if it's just in gossiping with our friends. We all want to know what makes people act the way they do and some of us find that in books, some in other places. And children not only want to find out what makes other people act the way they do, but also what makes them who they are, and who they might turn into.

So it was a fun lecture. I love hearing people talk about books they loved as children. I just love hearing people talk about books, period. He took questions from the audience afterwards, and that led to more discussion of his own writing and his own books, which Todd particularly liked. Then there was a book-signing, and although Todd did bring his battered paperback of Ender's Game (price on the cover: $3.50!) we were far back in the line and calculated it would take at least two hours to reach the front. So we took off. I suspect Todd will begin re-reading his Card collection once again--but we were both amused that a writer who is so opinionated about other people's bad writing was responsible for one of the worst books either of us has ever read, the execrable Empire. I guess we all have our blind spots!

Baby, it's [not] cold outside.

2010-10-28T14:01:00.004-04:00

Something very odd has happened to me this fall. I've started listening to Christmas music. I, who have always been very firm that Christmas music doesn't get played until after Thanksgiving, have broken my own rule quite badly.

I can't understand why, either, but it started when we went to the Newport News Fall Festival at the beginning of October and ran into a guy named Timothy Seaman who was playing hammered dulcimer and selling his CDs. As it happens, I was already familiar with his music because I'd bought a couple of his CDs on visits to the Virginia Living Museum, where they sell them in the gift shop.

Timothy has several Christmas CDs, and I bought one called "Incarnation" and took it home, and just had to have a listen, and it's wonderful. It's not just hammered dulcimer, there's also flute and piano and what-not. Very soothing, very happy music. So I got started listening to that, and then in the past week or so, there's been an insidious creeping through my CDs and mp3s in search of other holiday tunes.

I love digging through DVD and CD racks at stores that don't really sell CDs or DVDs, like at the grocery store or Office Depot. The selection is very random, and sometimes I find oddball treasures, like old Cary Grant movies. Several years ago I found a really strange Bing Crosby holiday compilation at Big Lots.

The last couple of years, I've looked forward to Jo-Ann's putting out their little kiosk with holiday CDs. Last year I found a great Frank Sinatra compilation, and this year, I found a CD called "Christmas Treasures." I love that swing-type of holiday music with Frank and Bing and Ella grooving along, and this CD has some songs I have never heard before: Frank singing "Let It Snow" and Bing singing "Little Jack Frost" with Peggy Lee, who has one of the sexiest voices I've ever heard. Burl Ives sings "Jingle Bells," Doris Day sings "Silver Bells," Nat King Cole sings "Frosty the Snowman." It's all the familiar voices, but they're singing songs I haven't heard them sing before. It was a great find! I know, I know, this list of singers makes me sound like I'm 85 years old at least. I just love that happy swingy Christmas sound. If you do, too, it's worth tracking down.

Anyway, it's still in the 80s here, and humid, and I am fed up with it! Cranking up the air conditioner and listening to Christmas music is my form of protest.

Fredericksburg.

2010-10-27T14:41:00.017-04:00

We had a very nice four-day weekend up in the Fredericksburg area, visiting battlefields. I had not realized there were four battlefields there, and I had this idea that we would spend a day or two in Fredericksburg, then go down to the Cold Harbor battlefield in Richmond, and then take in Petersburg and Appomattox at the end of our weekend, but as soon as we got to Fredericksburg I realized we'd be spending our whole weekend there, and gladly!

We took the battlefields in chronological order, starting at the Fredericksburg battlefield, which is right in town. In December 1862, the Union army attacked the town, and the Confederates were well-placed on a ridge just outside town (at the time) to the west. Thousands of men died charging this stone wall and the sunken road behind it, as the Confederates sat behind the wall and their guns on the hill behind it and basically picked off Union soldiers as they charged.

On a cool fall day with the traffic noise and the houses and trees all around, it's very hard to imagine such mayhem.

This is the Federal cemetery on top of the hill. The Confederate soldiers are buried in a cemetery in the middle of town.

We took a driving tour of the Fredericksburg campaign, which took us to this gorgeous house, built in the late 1700s, called Chatham, just across the Rappahannock River from the town. It served as Federal headquarters, and later, a hospital, during the battle.

I'm envious of the people who got to live in this house, especially the owners of the early 20th century who turned it into a showplace and a Gatsby-esque retreat. Now even with the dull National Park Service paint and the empty rooms and the displays, you can still get a feel for the luxury of the place, especially when you wander out to the terraces that descend to the river. This is the view of Fredericksburg from the yard.
I could have sat here all day--and I wanted to! It was so peaceful and so beautiful. I want to live in this house! Again, it takes a real effort of imagination to picture the place surrounded with troops and wagons and horses, and the yard and house filled with bleeding, mutilated, dying men.

The driving tour took us all afternoon and part of the next morning. Once we got done with that, we headed out Route 3 to the Chancellorsville battlefield, a few miles west of town.

This very busy crossroads was the site of the Chancellorsville tavern (owned by a family named Chancellor) that was at the epicenter of the battle. The family hid in the basement during the battle, and then were led to safety by Union soldiers when the house and the surrounding fields and forest caught fire. The blocks mark the site of the house.

The Chancellorsville battle was fought in May 1863, and it was another defeat for the Union army. However, Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded during this battle, just a few yards to the left of the visitor center below, and that was a huge loss for the Confederates.

We took the driving tour of Chancellorsville on Saturday, and again, it was a most-of-the-day event. We got to drive down beautiful country roads, through forests and fields--much nicer than the traveling that took place there 150 years ago!

Sunday was the Wilderness battlefield, just a mile or two down the road from Chancellorsville, a battle that took place exactly one year after Chancellorsville, in May 1864. This battle was different--Ulysses S. Grant was in charge of the Union armies now, and although it was technically a stalemate, it was the beginning of Grant's Overland Campaign that tore up the Confederacy in Virginia and ended in victory at Appomattox in 1865.

These are the remnants of Confederate earthworks (trenches) that run all over the battlefield. They were originally four or five feet deep, and topped with another foot or two of logs.

We had an excellent tour from one of the Park Service guides here--since it was late Sunday morning, we were the only two people in the tour, so he gave us the expanded version and answered lots of questions. Then we were off on another driving tour, more fields and forests.

The Wilderness was an especially awful and chaotic battle, because much of it was fought in the woods. Then the woods caught fire from the shelling, and wounded men were burned alive where they lay. One of the more horrible battles of a horrible war.

In the late afternoon on Sunday, we arrived at our last battlefield, Spotsylvania, which is in what used to be rural Spotsylvania County southwest of Fredericksburg. Spotsylvania was sort of a continuation of the Wilderness battle, taking place about a week later as the Union soldiers headed south toward Richmond and the Confederates tried desperately to stop them.

We had another terrific tour guide who walked us through the part of the battlefield known as the Bloody Angle, and I probably don't need to tell you why it was called that. Another desperate situation with Confederates defending a small rise, behind earthworks, and Union soldiers pouring over it, both sides bayoneting and shooting anybody they could reach, until the dead lay in the trenches three and four bodies deep. All of this in a torrential downpour, too.

The monuments mark different regiments that fought and died over this tiny scrap of ground.

We didn't manage to get to the driving tour of Spotsylvania that evening, so we got up early Monday morning and did it then.

The fall colors in this field were stunning--I don't think the photo does it justice at all. For some reason the woods on this morning were particularly beautiful.

Todd peeks through the reconstructed Confederate earthworks to see if he can find some pesky Federals to shoot at.

It certainly looks, from the photographic evidence, that all we did for four days was tour battlefields, and it kind of feels that way, too! I certainly learned a lot. But we also spent a few hours here and there in the downtown part of Fredericksburg, which is very old and very charming. Lots of fun places to eat and three used bookstores, which I enjoyed very much! We ate lunch there on Friday and returned on Friday and Saturday nights for dinner and more walking around.

It was hard to take pictures in the dark, so I didn't get any, but I was completely delighted with a town where one can buy books, get coffee or ice cream, and hear live music, all after 8 or 9 PM on a Friday night. What a concept! I'm a big fan of Fredericksburg--at least the downtown part. The outskirts are insanely congested with strip malls and traffic. So in a way I wish I lived there, but in another way I'm glad I don't. I can't wait to go back, though.

Wednesday stuff.

2010-10-20T09:31:00.004-04:00

I've got what sounds like Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" going on in my back yard--an enormous flock of little black birds is swooping from tree to tree and making such a racket that I initially thought my washing machine had something caught in it and went to investigate! The noise is just unbelievable.

I'm feeling grumpy today, because the car repair shop just came and towed away my car this morning. After it spent two weeks in the shop, I picked it up on Friday...and the "check engine" light came on on Sunday. So they still haven't fixed everything that Todd did to it when he smashed it up three weeks ago.

And Todd would not have been driving my car that fateful day that he wrecked it if the other car repair shop had fixed what was wrong with his car the first time they had it. So let's just say that car repairpersons are not my favorite breed of people right now. I am tired of being Without Car, and even driving rentals has lost its allure.

October is speeding past at an alarming rate. Todd just got home from his fall windsurfing trip to the Outer Banks, and while he was gone I went to a rubber stamp show at the Hampton Convention Center with my friend Cheryl, and played charity bingo with my friend Bev. I swear I couldn't win at bingo if you filled in half my spaces for free, but it was still fun. And the stamp show was excellent this year. I bought some very nice Christmas and fall-themed stamps, and some more Tim Holtz distress ink pads.

We are taking off for a long weekend of touring Civil War battlefields--my idea for celebrating my 40th birthday on Friday. I figure war, blood, mayhem and turmoil will help put turning 40 into perspective. As in, "I may be 40, but at least I'm not brewing coffee from acorns and stitching up wounded soldiers with sewing thread." Or "I may be 40, but at least I'm not bleeding to death in the mud or picking bits of myself off the nearest tree." It's all about perspective.

I bought some very nice cheap chrysanthemums for the front porch and took a picture, but it's gray and dreary here today and they don't look very sparkly, so I'll try again on a nicer day. Chrysanthemums seem to love my flower beds--I put in several tiny plants a few years ago, and they're shrub-sized now and covered with blooms. Even the drought this summer didn't seem to faze them. So this year I'm planning to buy a few more for the rest of the porch decorations, and then throw them into the front beds when they're done blooming. Soon my front beds will be nothing but mums, since those are the only things that seem to thrive there, besides weeds. Why doesn't drought kill weeds?

Today is laundry day--Todd brought home a huge pile from his trip to add to the rest of it, so I am just hanging around home and switching loads from time to time. Kind of dull, but I'm housebound anyway, so I'll just enjoy being at home and being almost 40. Like I said, it's all about perspective!

Cat at work, and other stuff.

2010-10-08T13:27:00.015-04:00

I won an Ebay auction last week for a miscellaneous batch of vintage iron-on embroidery transfers, and it arrived yesterday, a big ziploc bag full of large sheets and smaller images snipped from large sheets.

It was really fun to go through them, and this was a set that caught my eye. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of different tea towel designs in the embroidery transfer world. Some of them have the seven days of the week, with a chore for each day; some of them just have seven different chores listed, with the seventh always being something like "rest" or "worship" or as with one set I saw, "quit!"

The chores are done by cute dogs or cats, ducks, roosters, Dutch or Mexican girls, sunbonnet prairie girls, or sassy newlyweds. This set features a kitty cat, but it was the household appliances that I first noticed, in particular the TV:

I've looked at about a million of these things on Ebay in the past few weeks, and I've never seen a TV on one before. So that made me look closer at the rest of the set:

Most of these mid-century designs have an old-fashioned feel to them, so washing is done with a scrub board, sewing is done with a needle and thread, cleaning or sweeping is done with a broom, etc. But this set shows all the labor-saving devices of the day:

Love the little grocery cart here:

And this is the one that made me do a double take...

...I always thought I was fairly knowledgeable about antique household items, but this is a gadget I'd never seen before. After a bit I realized it must be what I'd heard called an "ironer," which I'd sort of assumed was just a folksy way of saying "iron," but which really is a real thing. I guess it's also called a "mangle," which I thought was the wringer thing that used to be attached to washing machines, which it is, but it's also an ironing device.

This is a cute video of one being used: ironer in action.

So it really is true, you do learn something new every day, even when it's taught to you by an ancient kitty cat.

In other news, Todd was involved in a rear-ender accident a week ago...we'd had torrential rain for three or four days (more rain in three days than in the past three months, seriously!) and he was headed to work and slid into the back of a couple of kids on their way to school. I guess there were four rear-enders in the space of a couple hundred yards, all at the same time--it was some seriously heavy rain!

We thought for a few days that we might end up getting a new (to us) car if the insurance company decided to total our old car, and the repair estimate was right on the borderline, but in the end they decided to repair, which is just fine with us. That means the money we'd have to chip in for a new car can just stay in the bank where it belongs!

So I've been driving rentals for a week, and will be for another week, and I can't believe I'm saying this but I want my crummy Volkswagen back! Sure, the rentals are clean and smell good, but the first one we had, a Pontiac something, had the most uncomfortable seats I've ever sat in. We took it to Harrisonburg on Saturday (a six-hour round trip) and we felt like someone was kicking us in the lower back the whole way.

So we traded it in for a Chevrolet something yesterday and that's definitely more comfortable, but I feel like I'm driving in a box, all the windows are so tiny. When I have to back up, I cross my fingers and hope that nobody decides to run behind me, because I'd never see them.

So I think when I get my crummy old car back, I'll clean it out and maybe have it detailed, and appreciate being able to get another year or two or three out of it.

In stitches.

2010-09-28T14:58:00.013-04:00

As it happens every year, I started to get in a creating kind of mood as soon as August was over. (Somehow my brain thinks it's fall--even when it's 95 degrees outside--as long as the calendar says September.)

Specifically, I really wanted to pick up a needle and do some stitching. I've done loads of cross-stitch, especially before the late 1990's when I discovered scrapbooking, and I've done some needlepoint, which I really enjoy, but I was wanting to do embroidery this time around. I haven't done a lot of it, mostly just some of Hillary Lang's cute little girls and boys from her site, which I did as stuffed Christmas ornaments several years ago.

Coincidentally, two books came out right around the same time that I was starting to get that needle itch: Alicia Paulson's Embroidery Companion and Vicki Haninger's Embroidery Craft. Alicia writes the delightful blog Posie Gets Cosy, and Vicki writes the equally delightful blog Turkey Feathers. The books are both terrific, too. Reading them really made me feel ready not only to hone my embroidery skills, but maybe also branch out into actual sewing with a machine, which has always intimidated me.

So I started thinking about what to make. Vicki runs a sweet little online shop called PatternBee, where she sells reprints of vintage iron-on transfers. I picked out one with horses and one with ballerinas, with the idea of making one of my nieces a horse pillow and for her sister, a ballerina pillow.

At this point I've finished the horse embroidery, started on the ballerina embroidery, and I'm having a great time with both. The ballerina has a fairly detailed face, and I felt nervous about attempting it, but she came out prettier than I could have hoped for.

As I prepared to start embroidering, I realized I needed to do something about my boxes of embroidery floss. I've done a few small projects over the years, and never bothered to put the cards of floss back where they belonged. I also had a bunch of skeins that needed to be wrapped onto cards and put in the proper order. Each color of DMC floss has a number--when doing a cross-stitch project, it's important to have the right numbers, and easier if they're boxed in order. With embroidery where you can pick your own colors, it's less important but still helpful to have the colors in order.

So I spent a pleasantly mindless afternoon last week sorting colors into their proper order, wrapping loose skeins and labeling them, and pulling out loose bits of thread that made the boxes look messy. When Todd came home and I showed him what I'd been wasting my time on that day, he totally got it. He loves to putter and organize and make things tidy, too. Further proof that we were meant for each other, no?

A couple of weeks ago, I found out that another blogger I read, lovely Barbara of Oodles and Oodles, was selling some lots of vintage embroidery transfers on Ebay. Amazing though it may seem, I was an Ebay virgin, but I set up an account and avidly watched my bids remain the highest--until I was sniped on both auctions in the last five seconds. Oh, the humanity! I'm afraid I didn't handle my brutal introduction to the world of Ebay very gracefully. I may have wished harm and mutilation on the person who sniped me. Oh, who am I kidding? I totally wished harm and mutilation on her.

After a couple of sulky days, I realized that Barbara was surely not the only person selling vintage embroidery transfers on Ebay, and I spent several enjoyable hours one night while Todd was out fishing, rummaging through the lots for sale. It's fun just seeing what's out there, so many goofy and kitschy patterns. I'm especially fond of all of the "days of the week" patterns for tea towels--apparently everyone in the mid-2oth century felt the need to feature dogs, cats, Dutch girls, anthropomorphic vegetables and dishes, and Mexican senors and senoritas on their dish towels. I'm going to make myself some very soon--I'm leaning toward Scotties.

I cannot believe September is nearly over. I was just trying to get through August, telling myself that September (and cooler weather) was on its way--and now September has come and gone with very little long-term change in the weather. I feel gypped. Maybe October will be better!

Meatball soup.

2010-09-21T17:47:00.005-04:00

We are having some very nice late summer weather, what I guess one would call Indian summer. I just now looked up "Indian summer" on Wikipedia since I have no idea where the term comes from, and it says, among other things that "traditionally, Indian summer can only be a true Indian summer after the first frost, generally a killing frost, of the season."

We are still far from frost weather, so I guess we're not in Indian summer here. Just lovely September weather, still warm-to-hot in the day-times, but mostly cool and breezy at night.

I made up a big pot of soup on the weekend--it was too warm for soup, but in my mind, which is still tuned to the weather of Ohio and probably always will be, soup weather happens long before the weatherman here in Virginia reacts accordingly. And besides, with a raging case of fall allergies, soup seemed indicated and was in fact very soothing to my nose and throat.

This soup is from a cookbook I picked up in May at the Fresh Market, which is a small chain of grocery stores in the Midwest and Southeast that specializes in organic and imported foods, hormone-free chicken, fancy condiments, and bulk nuts and spices. They released a cookbook for their 25th anniversary, and it was on sale, so I grabbed it on a whim.

Well! I have never experienced a cookbook like this one before. Every single thing I've cooked from it has been not just good, but delicious. It's very impressive. So here's the soup I cooked from it this weekend:

Italian Turkey and Spinach Meatball Soup

1 pound ground turkey
1 (10 oz.) package frozen spinach, thawed and drained
1 cup Italian style dry breadcrumbs

2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cups carrots, diced
2 cups celery, diced
1 cup onion, diced
1 cup green pepper, diced
8 ounces mushrooms, sliced
2 tablespoons Italian seasoning***
3 (32 oz.) cartons chicken broth
2 bay leaves
8 ounces pasta shells
croutons and Parmesan cheese for garnish

In mixing bowl, combine turkey, spinach and breadcrumbs. Roll mixture into small meatballs (1") and set aside.

In large Dutch oven, melt butter and olive oil over medium-high heat. Add carrots and cook for five minutes. Add celery and cook for five more minutes. Add onions and green peppers and cook until slightly tender. Add mushrooms and Italian seasoning, and cook until mushrooms are browned. Add chicken broth and bay leaves. Allow soup to come to a simmer, add meatballs, and cook over low heat for 2 hours.

Add pasta to soup and cook for another 20 minutes. Remove bay leaves. Garnish bowls of soup with croutons and Parmesan cheese, if desired. Serves 12-14.

***I have a packet of Italian seasoning that I don't think I've ever used before, but when I pulled it down and took a whiff, it smelled too much like thyme, which I only like in small doses, and sage, which I don't think belongs in Italian seasoning at all. So I made my own:

1 tsp. dried basil
1 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. dried marjoram
1/2 tsp. dried thyme
1/2 tsp. crushed fennel seeds

I know that doesn't come to 2 tablespoons, quite, but I thought it was plenty of spice.

We ate some of the leftovers for dinner tonight, and I think I can make it stretch to lunch tomorrow, too.

Salad and sniffles.

2010-09-20T13:51:00.004-04:00

I stirred up a really nice fall salad last night. Here's a photo of my empty salad bowl, because we gobbled up most of it last night and I ate the rest of it for lunch just now.

Fresh Fall Salad

2 medium heads green leaf lettuce, chopped
1 medium head radicchio, chopped
1 bulb fennel, thinly sliced
1 large red apple, thinly sliced (I used a Jazz apple)
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup sliced almonds
1/2 cup feta cheese, crumbled
Annie's Naturals balsamic dressing

I think it's the fennel that pulls this together so nicely. I just love fennel. I could have made my own dressing, but I was feeling lazy last night, and Annie's is very, very good.

In fact, I have been feeling lazy for almost a week now. My fall allergies are usually just a passing sniffle and a few weeks of itchy eyes, but this year has just been terrible. Headache, sore throat, achy face, sneezes, runny nose, the whole gamut.

Todd's parents were here for five days and I missed out on most of the fun running around they did with Todd because I was feeling too punk. I just stayed home, cooked dinners, did a little baking and some tomato freezing, and that was about it. Today I've run a few errands, but I still feel lousy.

I did run around the corner to the thrift store for the first time in ages, and that was a productive trip. I found a nice long-sleeved shirt for Todd, and four old Mary Englebreit magazines, which are hard to come by now that the magazine's out of print. I also got a few woolens on sale, to felt. I want to try to make some fall birds, like ravens, in grays and blacks, and I found a perfect wool sweater for 96 cents and a pair of gray wool pants for $1.96. They're spinning in the (hot) washer right now.

Bookshelf.

2010-09-16T10:20:00.009-04:00

I moved around my study a couple of months ago, and found some extra wall room for a small bookshelf. I'd been wanting a small shelf for my childhood books, which have been in boxes in the closet for several years.

But I couldn't find one anywhere! I wanted something nicer than the pressed-board things you get at Wal-Mart and screw together with an Allen wrench. I found a perfect shelf at a consignment shop, but they wanted about three times what it was worth. So Todd said he'd make me one.

While I was out of town this past weekend, he finished it up for me. But it was too nice to hide on a wall in my study! So I placed it at the end of our long upstairs hallway, and it looks like it was made just for that spot--even though it wasn't.

And all my books fit on it, with room for a few knick-knacks. Todd used these tiny brass screws at the joints, which I think look wonderful.

Thanks, creative husband of mine! Love you!

Memories of Grandma.

2010-09-14T14:40:00.034-04:00

As I did after the passing of my grandpa and my Grandma Clark last year, I've jotted down some thoughts and memories about my sweet Grandma, Martha Martin.

My grandma was born on her mother's birthday in May 1920 in rural Mahoning County, Ohio. She was the youngest of four children. She told me once that her mother suffered from poor health for the rest of her life after Grandma's birth, and that she always felt responsible for that. Grandma's aunt Mary lived with the family and helped out with the children and the chores to take some of the burden off Great-Grandma, who passed away when Grandma was 18 years old.

Grandma grew up on a farm, and her father sold produce and milk to help support the family. She liked to read her father's old McGuffey readers, and one of her favorite teachers gave her a book of Bible stories and a copy of Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates. She loved to read and play house in the corncrib when it was empty in the spring.

Grandma attended a country school until eighth grade, and wanted to go to high school very much. She loved school, especially spelling and history, and couldn't understand why all her friends moaned about school starting every fall. She was the first person in her family to graduate from high school, and she was the class valedictorian.

She married my grandpa when she was twenty-two, and they moved into a house right up the road from the house Grandma grew up in. She lived in that house for the next 65 years (and lived on the same road all her life!) Over the next 17 years, from 1943 to 1960, she gave birth to three sons and five daughters.

Grandma took care of children all her life--first her own kids, and then all the grandkids who ran in and out of her house over the years. My family lived in Missouri till I was six, and I remember coming to Ohio on visits and staying at Grandma's house. She made me pancakes in the mornings, and I played in her vegetable garden. I remember running in and out of the staked pea plants that towered over my head.

Grandma was a devoted gardener--out of necessity for many years, of course, when the family depended on everything they could grow and can and freeze themselves. But even into her eighties, she was still putting in a garden in the spring and putting up the produce all summer long. The apricot jam she made from the trees in their orchard was my very favorite.

She quilted and sewed all her life, both for her family and for the church relief organizations. Her stitches were in quilts and comforters that warmed her own family, and that were sent all over the world to warm others in need. She made most of her own clothes for many years.

I remember her making me handkerchief babies in church when I was little, which I'm sure was something she did for her own children, and probably something her mother did for her. She always had a flowered hanky in her purse. She would roll the hanky on one side and then on the other and turn it around somehow and then there were two tiny babies in a hammock.

She wrote poetry--some serious, thoughtful verses about her faith and family, and some quietly funny poems about dead dogs, prowling skunks, old age, and other quirky topics. She had a self-deprecating sense of humor, always quick to laugh at her own idiosyncrasies. She was frugal from years of pinching pennies, and she knew how to live on just what she needed and no more.

Grandma was a truly good person through and through. She had limitless patience. (At least, in the years I knew her...as a young mother her patience may have been in shorter supply!) I never heard her say a bad word about another person. She always seemed to look for the good in people. She cared about doing the right thing and making the right choices. She had empathy for others and treated others according to the Golden Rule. I have often thought to myself over the years that if my conscience had a voice, it would be Grandma's voice.

In the past few years, Grandma slowly slipped away, a little at a time. She had a couple of bad falls and used first a walker and then a wheelchair. Her memory started to fade--she still knew her children, but the names of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren became more elusive. It broke my heart a little bit the first time I visited her and had to remind her who I was. But the sweetness of her personality never faded at all. She never complained, never put up a fuss about the difficulties of life in a nursing home.

Grandma loved God with all her heart and soul and mind. She prayed for everyone in her family all her life. She read her Bible every night before bed. She was sitting in her chair reading her Bible when she passed away, as appropriate a death for Grandma as any of us could have imagined.

My cousin Pam and I were talking at Grandma's grave, about how challenging it will be to live up to the example Grandma set for us. I have a very different personality from Grandma...I have always been a cranky, cynical person and I probably always will be. But she and I were both deep thinkers. We both loved to write and read. I inherited her empathic nature, which she passed to my mother, who passed it to me. I inherited her wonder about the ways of God and the spiritual world. I can only hope to be as truly good and truly loving as she was all her life.

Home again.

2010-09-13T09:07:00.006-04:00

Oh, what a sad and tiring weekend it was. I don't think I knew before just how tired grief can make a person feel.

As I was flying home on Friday morning, my childhood friend Eric Wenger passed away. My family has been friends with his family for many years--our grandmothers were good friends, in fact. We went to the same church and for several years attended the same school and were in the same class. He was a year older than I.

Eric had a challenging life. A brain tumor and surgery in childhood left him slightly--but only slightly--delayed. He had the sweetest, most joyful spirit. Even after a stroke in his early thirties, which left him wheelchair-bound and unable to speak clearly, he always gave me a huge smile whenever I saw him. A final stroke two weeks ago sent him home to his parents' house to wait for the end, and he went to Heaven on Friday.

It's hard for me to articulate here how remarkable he was and how I felt about him...the feelings run a little too deeply to be easily shared. It was a very sad weekend.

We had a beautiful funeral for Grandma on one of the beautiful cool early-fall mornings that Ohio specializes in. A wonderful breeze blew during the graveside service, and it was good to stand there and feel it on my face. If the measure of a life is how much one was loved, then Grandma had a tremendous life indeed. Which she did.

2010-09-09T19:25:00.003-04:00

Here is a link to Grandma's obituary. I'm flying out very early tomorrow morning and coming back Sunday evening. It will be sad, but I'm looking forward to seeing all the family again. It will be good to all be together and remember Grandma. She was precious to us all.

Strange to think I have no grandparents living now. I feel so blessed to have had them in my lives for as long as I did, especially both my grandmothers, who were extraordinary women, each in her own way. It has been nice to think about Grandma this week and remember all the little moments I had with her, and it will be nice to hear more about her from some of the other people who loved her. I listened to a bit of an interview I did with her ten or twelve years ago, and it was lovely to hear her voice and remember her as she was.

2010-09-06T22:19:00.003-04:00

My heart is very sad tonight. My sweet Grandma Martin went to sleep this evening and woke up in Heaven. I will miss her so much.

Please keep my mom and her brothers and sisters in your prayers this week, and all of us far-flung family members who will be traveling to Ohio to say good-bye to Grandma.

What I did on my summer vacation.

2010-09-05T19:17:00.014-04:00

Ah, the long summer hiatus. Think of me as a TV show returning to my regularly scheduled night and time. (Hopefully.)

I had such big plans for my late summer, but the big kitchen re-do never materialized. Todd is still in search of wood to make new doors, and we had a flood of company in August that made a torn-up kitchen undesirable anyway.

My brother and his family came down the first weekend in August and we headed to the "real" beach, the ocean beach. In previous years, we've taken them to the "river" beach in Yorktown, which is much better for small children, but the girls are big kids now and they loved the ocean.

Here Marissa pretends to be a sea turtle. She was so covered with sand she looked like a breaded cutlet:

My brother and I and the girls, waiting for the next big wave:

Todd's sister Lisa and her family also stopped by for a night/morning on their way to the Outer Banks, but it was such a quick trip I didn't get any pictures. It was fun to get to see them, though.

The second weekend in August, we made a quick trip home to Ohio for a family reunion. Here's me and my sister, she must have just said something funny:

I helped my cousin Janine's son Isaac take a little stroll. He turned one year old a couple weeks after this and I believe is walking on his own now:

Some of us were eating and chatting...my dad and my cousin Alan:

Me and my mom and my aunt Carol:

...and others were kayaking and fishing in the small lake my aunt and uncle have on their property. My nephew Tanner:

My cousin-in-law Rich (Isaac's dad):

These two little cuties, Isaac and my cousin David's son Lucas, are the youngest members of the family, at one year old and two years old, respectively.

The oldest member of the family is Grandma, at 90, who was able to put in a brief appearance thanks to the terrific shuttle service her nursing home provides. Todd (my official photographer) was eating and fishing most of the time she was there, so he didn't get a good picture of her; I hope someone else did.

There are a lot of us when we all get together--and this wasn't nearly the whole family!

Missing were my cousins Jarrod and Mike (away in the Air Force and Coast Guard); my cousins Darrel and Dennis and their families; my brother and his family; my cousin Pam and her husband; and my cousins Dan and Derek, who had just gone back to college after the summer. You can imagine what a crowd it would be if we were ever all able to be together in one spot. I love my big family, they are all very special to me.

When we came home from Ohio, we brought my nine-year-old niece Kylie back with us. She stayed for five days and then flew home--her first time on a plane. We had a great week with her, going to the beach:

Todd took her crabbing several times, which she loved:

Todd also showed her how to kayak:

She and I took a dolphin cruise, too:

Then she hopped on a plane and flew away and I collapsed for a couple of days! I am not used to having a kid around full time! We had such a great time, though.

In the three weeks since Kylie left, I've been laying pretty low. I worked on a stitchery project that I'll share later...I read a bunch of not-so-great books (seriously, I'm really in a slump!)...I watched all ten episodes of Ken Burns' Jazz...I got back into my walking and diet routine that was sadly neglected during the first two weeks of August. Plus all the boring day-to-day stuff, of course.

Hurricane Earl was all set to plow into us here on the East Coast, but decided to just stroll on past and leave us mostly alone, which was just fine with me. We had a windy, rainy morning on Friday and that was it. And in his wake some slightly cooler, drier weather has come along, which is a blessing. I have the windows open tonight--I couldn't tell you the last time it's been cool and dry enough for that!

This fall we are looking forward to having some company and doing a little traveling here and there. We're also really hoping to get some exterior work done on the house. The kitchen re-do is still on the table, but won't get going until Todd finds some poplar for the doors and we get a nice big chunk of time to work on it. And I am just looking forward to (please God!) some cooler weather. This summer has been pretty bad and I am ready to wear jeans and long-sleeves again, although that won't be happening any time soon.

That's all from here!

Rediscovering the library.

2010-07-16T13:47:00.007-04:00

I was so disappointed when we moved to southern Virginia seven years ago and I got a good look at the library systems here, first the county system where we first lived, and then the city system where we live now.

I moved here from Columbus, Ohio, a city and a state which both devoted a lot of attention and money toward their libraries. (Granted, this was in the prosperous 1990's--things may be different now in Ohio.) I worked for a while at one of the branch libraries in the Columbus system, a brand-new building with a vast "new books" section, gorgeous wooden bookshelves, high spacious ceilings, a fireplace and cozy seating area--and of course, access to all the books in all the other Columbus branches--millions of books just a day or two away, once requested. And since I worked there, picking up my requested books was simply part of my routine.

We had two libraries close by our home--one was also part of the Columbus system, and was extensively renovated while we lived there, and the other closest library was part of a village system, but a wealthy village with lots of money to throw at its library. That particular library has been renovated twice in the past fifteen years--it's basically a mall with books at this point.

It upset me probably more than it should have, moving to a place where libraries seem more like an afterthought than a prominent community feature. I've mentioned my current library before--a small, squat, dark place whose most interesting feature is that it's named after astronaut Gus Grissom.

Not that I'm opposed to small libraries, necessarily...while I was in college in Marietta, Ohio, I was a regular user of the Washington County public library on Fifth Street. It was a small, old building that smelled like dusty paper. I'd walk there from campus to get my required dose of murder mysteries and other non-college related reading material. Because it was old, it had that hushed, sacred, echoing quality that modern libraries can't quite achieve.

We also had a small old library in Columbiana, Ohio, which was my beloved childhood library, tucked behind the high school on a bumpy brick-paved street. The steps down to the children's section in the basement were blood-red linoleum, narrow, slippery, steep, dark. (Obviously pre-Americans with Disabilities Act.) Every two weeks I would drag a bulging bookbag up the steps and out to the car. My mom would make me write a list of all my books the minute I got home, to try to avoid the ordeal of lost books and fines, which could run into some serious money with a kid who brought home as many books as I did. (That library was torn down years ago, and there's a nice, safe [boring] one-story modern library in a different neighborhood now.)

But the Grissom library in Newport News is small and charmless. It was built out of cement in that decade of architectural shame known as the 1970s. The new books section is sad and sparse. The building doesn't smell of old paper but of damp plastic carpet. And the library workers can be on the surly side. I go there once a year or so, and then I go home, missing Ohio.

But there must be some sort of belated homing instinct deep in my brain, like with swallows or pigeons, because about a month ago, I felt this deep desire to go to the library. For the past three years, I've been using Paperback Swap to fill my book needs (along with occasional trips to Borders) and although I love Paperback Swap passionately, there were books that I just wasn't able to find there, or that were so heavily wishlisted that it would be three more years before I'd work my way to the top of the list for them.

So I printed off a list of books I was looking for and spent some time clicking at the library card catalog computer and lo and behold--I found a lot of them. Not all by any means, but a lot. I brought home a stack, and went back a few days later to pick up another stack that I'd requested from the two or three other libraries in the city system.

I read through most of those (this all coincided with a 100-degree heat wave--good indoor reading weather) and went back two weeks later and brought home (and requested) two more big stacks. This time I also ventured into inter-library loan, which is not a service I've made much use of before, since I'm a person who tends to want books NOW.

I found that the library shelves and seating areas have been rearranged a bit, for a more open feel, which has greatly reduced the claustrophobic feeling. And I've found that early evening visits are the best--there are fewer people and more of a quiet bustle during that time, which is very soothing.

So far this has been the great satisfaction of my summer--bringing home big stacks of library books. The feeling reminds me so much of childhood summers, and that adds an extra layer of pleasure to it. All I would need to do is turn off the air conditioning and plop down on a blanket in front of a box fan with my newest read, and it would be like time traveling! (But I'm not turning off the a/c, not even to time travel!)

Kitchen snowballs.

2010-07-12T12:02:00.004-04:00

In true "if you give a mouse a cookie" fashion, my kitchen cabinet project has mushroomed into something a little more complicated. Not terribly complicated, but I can't start working on it just yet.

I was inspecting the cabinets and realized that, like the vanitites in the bathrooms, the countertop sort of wraps around and covers the top inch or so of the cabinet. Which means that the countertop really needs to come off before I start painting. (Otherwise, there's a ridge of paint that you have to sand and then you have to prime and paint that dumb little unfinished gap once the countertop does come off--annoying.)

I was going to start on the bar as sort of an appetizer before tackling the main course of big cabinets. So should we pull off the bar countertop so I can paint before finding a countertop, since it could take a number of weeks to get one in? No. We need to look at countertops now, so I can paint while we wait for it to come in.

I also found some cabinet doors at the Benjamin Moore store that I really liked, and took Todd in to see if he thought he could reproduce them. But since we were there anyway, we had the very nice man run us up an estimate on getting the cabinet doors pre-made from the company (I would paint them myself)...and we also picked out a countertop and added that to the estimate.

Hopefully, the Benjamin Moore estimate will be coming to my inbox today or tomorrow and then we can decide where to go from there. We also got an estimate from Lowe's on the countertops, but not the doors, as their cabinet companies only sell the whole cabinet set-up, boxes plus doors.

I did find a shade of white paint I liked at Benjamin Moore for the cabinets, called "Mascarpone," which is the soft Italian cheese that everyone* on the Food Network always mispronounces as "MARS-capone," which is one of those little things that drives me up the wall.

*Except Giada de Laurentiis, who over-pronounces it: "maaaahs-caaaaar-POOOOOH-nehhhh," which is almost as bad.

The countertop is a laminate called Ebony Star, which is black with lots of white speckles. I know everybody and their aunt insists on granite countertops these days, but in this house, it would be like sewing diamond buttons on a flannel shirt. Plus I don't really like granite, nor is it in the budget.

Then there's the issue of a new backsplash and possibly a new kitchen sink, since ripping out the countertop will probably muck up the tiles that are on the backsplash now, and why put a 20-year-old sink back into a shiny new countertop?

So you can see how these little ideas always, always snowball! The painting will hopefully be commencing in a few days. By which time I will probably have lost my desire/energy/focus to do it! That shiny new countertop will be the carrot to my painting-loathing donkey self, though.

Weekend's here!

2010-07-09T21:19:00.007-04:00

Some friends of ours are going on a trip to Utah and had some garden produce to dispose of that wouldn't get eaten while they were gone. I'm already plotting what to do with these adorable baby squash and tomatoes this weekend. Homegrown produce is a rarity around here, like diamonds and rubies. I guess I need to make more farming friends.

On Monday Todd had the day off, so we went antique-hunting in Richmond. The pickings were slim but I did find these two very cute dishcloths:

I found a cross-stitched sampler I really liked too, but it was too much money for a sloppily-done piece. So I (ssh!) had Todd take a couple pictures of it. I'll share them at some point when he and his phone are both home and I can remember. What I'd like to do is print the photos large and use them as a guide for reproducing it. Should be pretty simple. I've been wanting to do a little stitching project for ages.

Today I went and got TSP cleaner, and rollers, and tape, and primer for the cabinets. I brought home a few paint chips, too, so as to get just the right shade of white! I'm ready to start tackling this project, but probably won't get down to it until Sunday, since we have some running around to do tomorrow.

Looking forward to a semi-productive weekend!

Just a note.

2010-07-08T14:32:00.005-04:00

I'm home today working on laundry, so when I found this fun collage challenge over at Green Paper, I sat down and played along in between loads. Here's my creation:

And what a fun blog Green Paper is! I found it through another blog, The Feathered Nest, which is also a lot of fun. It's great to find new sources for vintage clip art and creative ideas.

Summer stuff.

2010-07-08T10:15:00.006-04:00

We finally caught a break in the weather last week for a few days, and I was able to spray paint the little wicker basket on a stand I picked up for free at a yard sale a few weeks ago.

I just love before-and-afters, so here's the before again:

And the after:

How I love cheap projects! I want to get one or two more small plants to put in it, and maybe some different garden-type odds and ends. This is just a random collection of stuff I grabbed from the house to dress it up.

On the Fourth of July, the weather went back to insanely hot and humid after several wonderful cool days. We have so many projects we want to do on the front of the house, but there's no way to do any kind of sustained work outside in 100-degree heat. So I started thinking about what I could work on inside, and the kitchen cabinets sprang to mind.

I've been pondering what to do with the cabinets ever since we moved in four years ago...they are a nice quality oak finish, but the doors and lower edges are in bad shape. We decided long ago to do the same thing we did with our bathroom vanities: keep the cabinet, but paint it, and make new doors and paint those, too, plus add new hardware. It's worked out really well in the bathrooms.

However kitchen cabinets get much more use and abuse, so the process is a little longer and a little scarier. But since it will be probably two months before the weather is fit to work outside, this seems like a good way to accomplish something despite the weather.

Right now I'm trying to figure out what type of doors I want, and what color to paint them. I know they will be white, but I can't decide whether to go with the same white as the trim in the rest of the house, or whether to use a slightly warmer, creamier white. This all feels slightly terrifying! Nobody really looks at bathroom vanitites (At least I don't) but kitchen cabinets are right out there for all the world to see. Gotta get it right!

So think good thoughts for me as I research and buy my materials and unscrew that first cabinet door!

Fourth of July weekend.

2010-07-03T16:01:00.004-04:00

I'm going to post the Memorial Day pictures I took of my front porch for the Fourth of July, since after a month of 90- and 100- degree temperatures, these flowers don't look so great any more.

The white and blue lobelia is all long dead...the red geraniums on the steps have mostly stopped blooming...the red geraniums in the hanging baskets are struggling along, but have about a third as many blooms on them...my beloved blue and white petunia basket that I brought home from Ohio is hanging in there, too, but it has about half as many blooms now.

I've watered and Miracle-Gro'ed assiduously, but I guess potted plants can only take just so much. Now I have very little color left in my beds or on my porch, but I'm not sure I want to try planting any new annuals that will probably just crisp up and die in whatever summer blasts July has in store for us. Ah, gardening...! At least it was nice for a week or two...

Obsolete.

2010-06-28T19:13:00.004-04:00

Tonight I'm finally getting around to something I've been wanting to do for ages. I have several cassette tapes here with interviews I did with both of my grandmothers and my great-aunt Helen 10-12 years ago. Every so often I think about them and think that I've got to get them digitized and saved on my computer against the day when the tapes fall apart. Todd got me set up tonight and I'm playing them through and recording them right now.

I'm listening to an interview that I did with my grandma Clark over the phone in May 1998. It gives me a little lump in my throat to hear her voice with the Missouri twang in it. And I sound ridiculously young--I was 27.

You always wish you had done more, don't you? I have 45 minutes of Grandma Martin, about 90 minutes of Aunt Helen, maybe two hours of Grandma Clark. It's not enough.

I remember interviewing Grandma Martin, and some of the memories of her parents made her a little emotional, and I felt intrusive. So I didn't interview her again. Now I wish I had talked to her about her life as a young mother and about her kids and about how she managed to make ends meet. Grandma is still alive but at age 90, her memory is very patchy.

Remembering the face-to-face interview I did with Grandma Clark in 2001 never fails to make my blood boil--we talked for an entire side of a tape, she told me about meeting and marrying my grandpa--and at the end of the tape I took it out and it had not recorded any of it. I've never forgiven Radio Shack for their shoddy merchandise!

When I interviewed Aunt Helen, she sat in her rocking chair and rocked like a little girl, just as hard as she could. Six weeks later, she passed away. I was so glad I had gone to see her.

It is odd to fumble with cassette tapes and stick them in the little player. You realize how obsolete a technology is when you can't remember which way it goes into the player!

Now I'm sitting here thinking about all the other people I should get on tape while I can. I understood, logically, that my grandparents would not be around forever. Now they're gone into death and dementia and I'm looking around in surprise thinking "How did that happen?"

So if I give you a call and ask you to talk into my obsolete technology, you'll understand why, right?

Yard sale finds.

2010-06-21T22:59:00.009-04:00

I swear I have sat down to write a blog post and been thwarted at least three times in the past few days. Our internet seems to be dismayed by the hot steamy weather and develops an intermittent case of the vapors. (And it cut out on me again while I was writing this.) That's my theory anyway--we may just need a new router or something prosaic.

I had a great Saturday morning, hitting a few yard sales for the first time in months and months. For quite some time, I've just been sleeping in on Saturday mornings and letting Todd go out and do the hunting and gathering--mostly because my house is brim-full of stuff and I have no more room. But on Friday night I started thinking about some of the things I'd like to do outside, and it occurred to me that yard sales are always a good place to find outside stuff, too.

I found these cushions at an estate sale:

They're very flat, and made from printed panels that were stitched around for a quilted effect. I remember this being a very popular craft 15-20 years ago. They just look so perfect on the patio chairs, don't you think? I bring them in at night so they don't get damp and dirty.

The back deck looks so cool and lovely here, doesn't it?

Actually it was upwards of 100 degrees out there and not much better today. So I admire the cushions from inside where it's cool and dry. Maybe someday I'll get to sit on them.

At the same estate sale, I spotted this doo-hickey:

I think it's supposed to be a sewing basket on a stand, but the top of the lid is all torn. The guy who was handling the outdoor traffic told me I could just take it, no charge.

I was all set to bring it home and chop off that lid piece and spray paint it and reveal a wonderful before-and-after miracle...but the spray paint can says to spray when it's between 45-85 degrees and low humidity. That may mean it will be September before I transform this thing. It certainly won't be happening this week. I want to set it on the back deck and fill it with plants and tchotchkes. Can't wait!

I also got three strawberry jars, those terracotta jars with all the holes where you can tuck plants. When I asked the gentleman at the sale how much the strawberry jar was, he asked me to show him where it was. He told me that when I said "strawberry jar," he had no idea what I was talking about--his dad always called them "10-man urinals." I laughed and laughed! This is a strawberry jar, for those who don't know:

I also got three books, an old-fashioned food mill, and curtain rods for Todd's study. Not too bad.

Stamps.

2010-06-13T23:02:00.004-04:00

I am a member of Paperback Swap, so I get books in the mail from people all the time. This one was unusual, though:

Some of the stamps on this book are almost 60 years old! Todd and I were completely fascinated by them. I can't throw the wrapper away...but I'm not sure what to do with them...

I sent a message to the member who sent me the book, asking about the stamps (I'm picturing a woman who didn't feel like going to the post office and who decides to raid her husband's stamp collection) but haven't heard back yet. I'm so curious!

Flowerbed before-and-after.

2010-06-09T19:54:00.009-04:00

I am really making an effort to stay on top of the flowerbeds this summer, and try to keep them from getting so messy. (Last summer was particularly bad because we traveled to Ohio for over a week, and then I had my breast-reduction surgery at the end of July and couldn't do anything strenuous with my arms, like pull giant weeds!) It's early days yet, but so far, so good. We're not going anywhere this summer, which should help...it's always during our week-long Fourth of July trip home that the chaos starts to snowball.

Over Memorial Day weekend, Todd and I (but mostly Todd) took on an area that badly needed attention: our front flowerbed.

As you can see, this was a sad spot. We put some work into it last year, adding some rock "walls" and lots of plants, but coming into this spring it was weedy and overgrown, and the landscaping timbers around the edges were disintegrating. With some new timbers and fresh mulch, everything looked much happier:

Then Todd took on the mailbox post and devised a new design for it, plus a coat of paint, and a solar light for the top. Oh, and some new house numbers:

I want to add some brightly-colored annuals in with the perennials, but I think we have definitely accomplished something here. What a good feeling that is!

Deck ideas.

2010-06-05T14:15:00.003-04:00

I just love some of these Better Homes & Gardens ideas for dressing up your deck...I'm saving them here so I can come back to them someday!

Summerhouse.

2010-06-02T13:30:00.016-04:00

In honor of my aunt Molly who has a big birthday today, here are some pictures of her latest creative triumph.

I mentioned last year how Molly had moved the old summerhouse, which stood next to my grandparent's' home for decades, to her own yard after their property was sold.

Here's what it looked like at Grandpa and Grandma's house:

Here's what it looked like when Molly first had it moved to her yard:

And here's what she's transformed it into:

I wish I had a really good shot of the exterior, but my memory card was brim-full and I had to snap selectively. This is my Aunt Molly, my Uncle John, and my nieces Kylie and Natalie. (I took these while I was at home a couple of weeks ago.)

Inside Molly has filled the little house with old things:

Kylie, Natalie and Marissa loved the little house and immediately started playing "Boxcar Children." And a few days later my aunt hostessed my mom, my sister and I for tea and scones in the summerhouse, which was just lovely.

But why save an old falling-down shed and move it at considerable expense and inconvenience? A quick glance through the family photo album will tell you why. The summerhouse lurks in the background of lots of photos. Here are my grandparents with my Uncle Lowell, my Aunt Naomi (Molly) and my mom is the baby--but not for long.:

Two more brothers, my uncles Larry and Ron, with my mom and Molly:

And then two little sisters, Kathy and Charlotte:

An almost-complete family...

...till my aunt Carol came along to make eight kids total.

Then there were grandkids (my brother, my cousin Krista, myself (the oldest) and my cousins Darrel and Dennis):

We all had fun at Grandpa and Grandma's house. (Grandpa, my cousins Michael and Alan.)

The younger ones didn't get to spend as many years there as we older ones did, but they'll remember it, too. (Grandma and my cousin Daniel.)

Before you know it, you've got a BIG family (and there were more grandkids, grandkids-in-law, and great-grandkids in the years to come.)

And then there was just the two of them again.

And then they had a big sale and a couple of the great-grandkids came to help. (My niece Kylie and my nephew Tanner.)

But this is the way it used to be in front of the summerhouse:

I'm happy this little slice of family history was saved.

Hiatus.

2010-06-01T13:41:00.004-04:00

My loyal readers (all two of them!) have mentioned to me that my blog has been awfully quiet. My desire to express myself seemed to completely dry up in April, and in May, I was either traveling or gearing up to travel again. Spring has whizzed past and now summer has begun. Amazing!

In April I was trying to reassess whether keeping a blog was something I wanted to do. It's been five years since I started blogging and the emphasis of blogging has shifted in an interesting way, as more and more people create money-making enterprises around their blogs, or connect their blogs to their businesses, and track their followers and their ad revenue.

In this climate it seems downright quixotic to just jot down my thoughts and post a few pictures for the tiny handful of people who might see them. On the other hand, I've never had a problem before with pursuing my own little interests down my own little-traveled path.

And blogging is a pleasure. I realize that particularly when I go back and look at a given day in several different years and see what changed and what remained the same from year to year. I've always had a good memory, but it seems to be letting more and more things slip through the cracks, and my blog helps me hold onto some of those things.

All that is my long-winded way of saying "I'm back!" (For now, anyway.)

Pictures to follow, once I get some time to work on the upstairs computer where they're stored.

2010-03-22T10:30:00.015-04:00

Catching back up with the Women's History Month questions. Some of the questions are things that I have no clue how to answer, so at this point I'm just picking through them.

Shining star: Did you have a female ancestor who had a special talent? Artist, singer, actress, athlete, seamstress, or other? Describe.

My mother and my grandmother are/were both excellent seamstresses. Grandma made quilts; Mom made most of my clothes when I was small, plus clothes for my dolls. She sewed my wedding dress and three bridesmaid dresses and then whipped up a lovely suit for herself to wear to my wedding. Nowadays she sews projects for the grandkids.

Here's a picture of me and my mom together in matching dresses that she made.

Have you discovered a surprising fact about one of your female ancestors? What was it and how did you learn it? How did you feel when you found out?

Ten years or so ago, my grandma Martin found two pictures while she was rummaging through things, pictures she didn't remember ever seeing before but was sure they were of her mother Fannie Martin Weaver as a young woman.

I still remember how pleasantly surprised I was by these pictures--almost all of the pictures of Great- Grandma were taken when she was in her middle years, and she was in poor health for many of those years, with what may have been epilepsy, so to see her as a young woman with a mischievous twinkle in her eye was a delight.

I should add that we don't know 100% for certain that this is Fannie, but Grandma was very sure, and comparing these photos to other photos of her, it seems very likely. The second picture looks very much like my cousin Krista, another of Fannie's great-granddaughters.

This is not one of the official Women's History prompts, but in looking through the old photos in my computer files just now, I was struck by how many pictures I have of my female ancestors with their sisters. I know that several of my ancestors, including my mother, have/had very special relationships with their sisters, so I thought it would be nice to show some of the other women in my family.

This is my great-great-grandmother Frances Lesher Weaver (on the left) with her sisters Elisabeth and Susan.

This is my great-grandmother Velma Collins Clark (far left) with her sisters.

This is my grandmother Mary Fenton Clark (second from left) with her sisters Helen, Esther and Florence.

This is my grandmother Martha Weaver Martin (in the center) with her sisters Carrie and Edna, and their parents Noah and Fannie Weaver.

This is my mother Lucille Martin Clark (second from left) with her sisters Kathy, Charlotte, Molly and Carol.

And here is me and my sister Jenita on my wedding day...

...and on hers.

It's a great thing to have a sister or two. Or four!

Whassup with me.

2010-03-16T20:20:00.003-04:00

Todd is downstairs watching a DVD of "How I Met Your Mother," and I am up here surfing around and actually feeling like writing, which I have not in several weeks.

I can't remember if I ever mentioned it before, but spring is hard for me, for some reason. I just do not like most things about spring, especially the capri pants. This is what I look like in capri pants:

The left image is me, the right image is my reflection in the mirror at the clothing store, and I am shouting that I do not like capri pants and wagging my finger to emphasize the point.

My brain slows down when spring arrives. I don't know if it's the pollen phlegm or what, but I always go into a mental coma. I feel like I'm coming out of it today, hence the ability to blog-write.

In spring, the neighbors and their kids and their dogs come out of winter hibernation at the exact same time when I start to feel the need to open windows and let in some fresh air. But opening windows also lets in the neighbors/kids/dogs noise, too. Winter is so nice and quiet!

On the bright side, my tulips and daffodils have nice green shoots poking up, which the bunnies are already sampling. My chives and parsley are looking very promising, too. One thing I do love about spring is the GREEN of it all.

I cooked a recipe from a book tonight. Not a cookbook, but one of those novels with recipes included, which I have found can be pretty hit-or-miss. The book was American Cookery by Laura Kalpakian, which I really enjoyed, and the recipe was a simple pork chop thing, which would have been better if I hadn't overcooked them. I do that a lot with chops and steaks, it's frustrating.

All you do is season the chops with salt, pepper and cumin, brown them and cook them with garlic and orange marmalade. I added a tiny slurry of red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard and cornstarch, shaken up in the empty marmalade jar. It definitely had promise.

I bought some Skechers Shape-Ups on Sunday, since I needed new walking shoes anyway, and these are supposed to tone your legs and butt, improve your posture, increase your IQ and make you ten years younger. Lots of promises on that shoebox!

They came with an information booklet and a DVD to show you how to walk in them, which seemed like overkill to me. I think I must walk pretty well already because I haven't had any problems with them so far. They have a rounded sole that replicates the feel of walking on a soft surface like sand, which is supposedly more of a workout for your legs. I find them very comfortable so far, but I don't look any younger. Darn.

That's it for now.

Ladies' lunch.

2010-03-16T19:54:00.004-04:00

The Women's History Month prompt for today is an intriguing one.

If you could have lunch with any female family member (living or dead) or any famous female who would it be and why? Where would you go? What would you eat?

I would love to have lunch with my grandma Clark who passed away in October. I lived far away from her for most of my life and I feel so strongly that I did not get to have enough time with her.

I would have her come to my house, which is something she was never able to do, and I would make lunch for her. Just something nice and simple, maybe beef barley soup and wheat bread. Wouldn't that be lovely!

It's also interesting to think about what famous female I would want to have lunch with. The first person who comes to mind is Dorothy Parker--except I wouldn't want to have lunch with her, just be one of the crowd at the Algonquin Round Table on a day when she was at her wittiest. Say, a spring day in 1922. I'd have a famous Algonquin popover and a Manhattan. Or two. She'd have scotch.

Grandma and Dorothy Parker--you couldn't find two more different women, that's for sure!

Catching up.

2010-03-13T14:12:00.010-05:00

This has been an odd week, I have just not felt like sitting at the computer for more than a few minutes at a time. But here are a few of the Geneablogger prompts for this week that I've been meaning to address all week.

What role did religion play in your family? How did your female ancestors practice their faith? If they did not, why didn’t they? Did you have any female ancestors who served their churches in some capacity?

I come from a very religious family. My mother and both of my grandmothers are/were Mennonite. Three of my great-grandmothers were Mennonite, and one was Baptist. These were women who were in church every Sunday, who cooked for church meals and for members in crisis, who sewed quilts and taught Sunday School. So yes, they served their churches, but not from the pulpit or from the front of the church, but quietly in the background, the way women have served the church for two thousand years.

Here is my grandma Martin with a church sewing group...Grandma is third from the right.

Did you have any female ancestors who died young or from tragic or unexpected circumstances? Describe and how did this affect the family?

Two of my great-grandmothers lost their mothers at young ages, and had a hard time adjusting both to the deaths and to the step-mothers who came along afterward. I don't have my Family Tree Maker software set up on this computer, so I'll have to come back and add some of the names, dates and ages when I can get to them.

My great-great grandmother Mary Ziegler Lehman died at age 25 giving birth to her third child, who also died. She was buried with the baby in her arms. Here is Mary:

Mary's daughter Anna, my great-grandmother, was very young when this happened, and never really adjusted to her father's re-marrying and having three more children with his new wife. She never had a good relationship with her step-mother.

The only pictures I have of Great-Grandma Anna are from late in her life. Here's a scrapbook page I made, showing my great-grandmother Anna Lehman Martin with her son, my grandpa Ira Martin, her granddaughter (my mother) Lucille Martin Clark, and little old me, her great-granddaughter, at about age three.

My great-grandmother Velma Collins Clark also lost her mother at a young age. Family lore has it that Velma's mother killed herself with poison, overwhelmed and overworked.

Velma resented her new step-mother so much that she moved out to work as a hired girl as soon as she was old enough. This was one of the few jobs available to rural girls then, living with other farm families and providing extra help for other overwhelmed, overworked women with too many kids to take care of. I believe all of my great-grandmothers, and quite a few of my great-great aunts, spent time working as hired girls before marrying.

Velma ended up working for the Clark family, and caught the eye of their son Lewis. They got pregnant, and got married--in that order, I imagine it was quite a scandal--and then lost the baby girl Velma was carrying, either at birth or soon after. They had four sons after that.

Here is Great-Grandma Velma later in life with her husband Lewis and their first grandchild:

Working girl: Did your mother or grandmother work outside the home? What did she do? Describe her occupation.

My mother worked several different jobs when she was young, including waitress at Howard Johnson's and grocery clerk. She was a stay-at-home mom when I was small, and then worked as a teacher's aide, and then as an aide at a nursing home. At about age 40, she went to school and got her LPN and has been a nurse ever since, working at several different nursing homes.

My grandma Mary Clark was a one-room schoolhouse teacher for several years before and after she was married. When she and my grandpa split up, she ran a nursing home and then became an LPN. She worked at a hospital for years, and then worked at a nursing home for many more years, and didn't retire until she was well past 70.

My grandma Martha Martin never held a job outside the home that I know of, but spent most of her life raising eight kids, which is the hardest job I can think of. I love this picture of Grandma Martin, surrounded with kids, but with a real look of contentment on her face:

Moment of Strength: share a story where a female ancestor showed courage or strength in a difficult situation.

My grandma Mary Clark spent fifteen years in an unhappy marriage to my grandpa, scraping by with a very difficult man in a very impoverished life. She finally took it upon herself to leave him, build her own home, go to school, get a nursing degree, and finish raising her five kids on her own. I have tremendous respect for her strength and courage. Here is Grandma with her hard-earned nurse's cap:

Meals.

2010-03-07T11:32:00.007-05:00

Today's Women's History Month prompt from Geneabloggers:

March 7: Share a favorite recipe from your mother or grandmother’s kitchen.

My mom is an excellent cook. My favorite of her recipes is her whole-wheat crescent rolls, which I just searched my kitchen for and cannot find; I know it's tucked into a cookbook somewhere. I've only just become comfortable with yeast baking and haven't tried making her crescent rolls for myself, but someday I will...as soon as I find that recipe! There's just something about the smell of yeast and flour that says "home" to me.

I don't remember either of my grandmothers cooking much, although I know they did. When we would visit my grandma Clark in Missouri, she was often working nights while we were there, and so there would only be one or two "big" meals that I can recall, with all the family together, or as many as could cram into her tiny eat-in kitchen. Here's a picture of a meal from the mid-1980's; pictured are my sister Jenita, my dad, my cousin Marissa, my aunt Mary, my cousin Dan, and me and my brother Jeremy with our backs to the camera. Grandma loved having a table full of grandkids.

I don't have a picture of Grandma Clark in her kitchen, but here she is looking fetching in a hostess apron, gathering up Christmas bows to re-use them, no doubt. This would have been Christmas 1972 or 1973. My aunt Gwena is at the bottom admiring her new sewing box.

I remember more meals at Grandma Martin's table, since we lived closer--we had holiday meals at her house until the extended family outgrew the house and we had to start meeting in the church basement for get-togethers. But I don't remember anything specific that she cooked.

Here's a picture of a meal in Grandma Martin's kitchen, probably around 1975. Pictured are my uncles Ron and Larry, one of my twin cousins (either Darrel or Dennis, but who knows which?), my mom, me, my dad, my uncle John and my aunt Molly. It looks like we're eating assorted casseroles, with peanut butter and homemade jam for the kids.

Here's Grandma Martin in her kitchen in the early 1980's with three of her many grandbabies: Melanie, Pamela, and Michael. With eight kids and sixteen grandkids, I think Grandma must have spent the larger portion of her life in that kitchen with a baby on her lap and a pot on the stove.

I think I need to get a picture of my mom in her kitchen, and maybe some shots of the family crammed around her dining room table next time I'm home, don't you?

Heirloom.

2010-03-06T12:39:00.007-05:00

Today's Women's History Month prompt from Geneabloggers:

March 6: Describe an heirloom you may have inherited from a female ancestor (wedding ring or other jewelry, china, clothing, etc.)

When I got married, my grandma Clark gave me several family dishes, and this was one of them, a small glass jelly dish. It belonged to my great-grandmother Velma Collins Clark, and is one of the possessions I take extra-special care of.

Here is Great-Grandma Clark with her four sons in the early 19-teens. She would have been in her early 30's here. My grandpa, Marion Clark, is the boy with the giant britches right in the middle of the picture.

One interesting thing she and I have in common is that we share the same birthdate: October 22, although I was born two years after she passed away.

Meetings.

2010-03-05T10:27:00.005-05:00

Today's Women's History Month prompt from Geneabloggers:

March 5: How did they meet? You’ve documented marriages, now, go back a bit. Do you know the story of how your parents met? Your grandparents?

I told how my Martin grandparents met in my last post. On the Clark side, Grandma's parents bought a farm right next to my Grandpa's parents' farm, so they were neighbors. Grandma's sister Florence married Grandpa's brother Elmer, so I guess it seemed like a good idea for Grandpa and Grandma to hook up. I would love to know how that happened, though--he was twenty years older than her.

My parents met at a corn-husking party, in college. They both went to a small rural Mennonite college and I guess that was the kind of thing rural Mennonites did for fun in the late '60's while everybody else was listening to Jimi Hendrix and smoking pot.

Anyway, they were in a group of kids walking across a field, and my mom stepped in a hole and almost fell. My dad grabbed her arm and said, "Guess you fell for me, huh?" And the rest was history. They've been married for 40 years.

Here's a cute picture of Mom and Dad as newlyweds:

Weddings.

2010-03-04T08:24:00.007-05:00

I have been looking everywhere because I know I have a picture of the four generations of "Maes" from my post below...of course it's nowhere to be found! Ah well.

Today's Women's History Month prompt from Geneabloggers:

March 4: Do you have marriage records for your grandparents or great-grandparents? Write a post about where they were married and when. Any family stories about the wedding day? Post a photo too if you have one.

I have dates of marriage for most of my ancestors, but I don't know too many details about any of the weddings. I suppose the most I know is about my Martin grandparents--they met when Grandma's friend married Grandpa's brother, and Grandma and some of her friends took a trip out to visit her. Grandpa's parents invited the group to their home for dinner, and that was how Grandma met Grandpa.

They were married January 21, 1943, and I believe they had the longest marriage of any couple in my family: 66 years. Here are Ira Martin and Martha Weaver on their wedding day:

I've mentioned before that since most of my family was Mennonite, and the ones that weren't were dirt-poor, we have a scarcity of fancy wedding portraits in my family! Here is the only one I've got...these are my Grandma Martin's parents, Noah Weaver and Fannie Martin, who were married November 26, 1908:

In their church at that time, young people could dress "fancy," I believe, until they officially joined the church. I remember Grandma telling me that her parents dragged their feet about doing so! No wonder--they were handsome people and looked very nice dressed "fancy."

Mae.

2010-03-03T20:28:00.004-05:00

Today's Women's History Month prompt from Geneabloggers:

Do you share a first name with one of your female ancestors? Perhaps you were named for your great-grandmother, or your name follows a particular naming pattern.

I don't share a first name, but I do share a middle name that has gone through four generations of females in my family. My grandmother's name is Martha Mae; my mother's name is Lucille Mae; my name is Janelle Mae.

Knowing that I would not be having any kids of my own, I asked my brother to consider giving his firstborn the middle name "Mae" if she turned out to be a girl. She did! Now we have Natalie Mae in the fourth generation.

Women's History Month.

2010-03-02T09:35:00.006-05:00

I've been out of town for a few days (more on that later) but I was catching up on my forums this morning and found some very interesting blogging prompts for the month of March, which, as everyone knows, is Women's History Month. You didn't know that? Neither did I!

I'll have to combine the March 1 and March 2 prompts, since I was in a car all day yesterday and in no position to blog.

March 1's prompt: Do you have a favorite female ancestor? One you are drawn to or want to learn more about?

I can't say I have a favorite, but each of my great-grandmothers interests me for various reasons. If I could only pick one to resurrect and have a chat with, it would probably be my great-grandmother Emma Shank Fenton. She is the subject of one of the most vivid stories in the Fenton family, one that was obviously told over and over to her children and grandchildren, and told to me about ten years ago by her daughter, my great-aunt Helen.

Emma and her husband and two small children, plus her husband's father, were traveling across the West in the 19-teens looking for a place that would be better for her father-in-law's health than wet Missouri. They were living in Wyoming where Great-Grandpa was working on Buffalo Bill's ranch.

Two-year-old Helen and four-year-old Lewis were playing Sunday School one bitterly cold Sunday morning, and Helen fell off her little stool and landed against the red-hot woodstove, burning her face and her eye badly.

Great-Grandma put Vaseline and egg whites on Helen's eye, bundled her up and carried her, took Lewis by the hand, and walked across the frozen Bighorn River to find Great-Grandpa and someone who could provide a wagon to get Helen to the doctor. Oh, and did I mention she was pregnant at the time?

This is a woman I would love to have known.

March 2 prompt: Post a photo of one of your female ancestors. Who is in the photo? When was it taken? Why did you select this photo?

Since I was just talking about Great-Grandma Emma, here's a picture of her with her husband Clyde Fenton, and Lewis and Helen, during the years they spent traveling through the West. This was in Nebraska, and yes, they were living out of a tent. The picture was taken around 1913-14.

A BIG birthday.

2010-02-24T08:47:00.004-05:00

Forty years ago today somebody very special came into the world, and he grew up to become my husband!

Todd has been a blessing to me every day of my life for almost 22 years, and I am so glad that he was born. (Did I mention that was FORTY years ago? Just wanted to make sure!)

He is truly a remarkable man and somehow he just keeps getting better-looking, too, in that annoying way men do when they're FORTY and over.

He's smart, funny, sweet, creative, hard-working and kind. Yes, God sure knew what he was doing when he made Todd...FORTY years ago.

Ah well, getting older is unavoidable, but at least we get to do it together, sweetie. Happy (fortieth) birthday to my favorite person in the world--I love you lots!

Color therapy.

2010-02-17T11:19:00.008-05:00

I really don't mind winter, especially Virginia winter, which is "winter lite" compared to other places I've lived (Idaho, I'm looking at you!)...and even though we've had a harsher winter than usual this year, it pales in comparison to the mountains of snow my friends and family elsewhere are dealing with...and yet, I think I am ready for a warm breeze and some COLOR!

Most days I can find a kind of muted beauty in brown grass, brown leaves, brown tree trunks, and a gray sky, but not today. So here are the tulips I bought last week...gone now, but remembered fondly. February is the perfect month for tulips.

I went out on a limb and combined red/yellow tulips with hot pink, and I thought the result was wonderful. The pot is a McCoy pot I found at my favorite antique store (which isn't saying much since there are about three antique stores in all of Hampton Roads, but this one really is terrific)--anyway, I LOVE it and it was perfect for a big fistful of tulips.

I think I might need to go out and bring home a new fistful of tulips to look at...because color is good therapy in February.

Colors.

2010-02-10T11:26:00.002-05:00

This is a fun test I found on another site: Color Career Counselor. When it gets to the part where it asks for all your information, just scroll down and hit "No Thanks" and you can get your results. Here's an article that describes the test.

I have to say my results were dead on for my personality:

Best Occupational Category

You're a CREATOR

Keywords

Nonconforming, Impulsive, Expressive, Romantic, Intuitive, Sensitive, and Emotional

These original types place a high value on aesthetic qualities and have a great need for self-expression. They enjoy working independently, being creative, using their imagination, and constantly learning something new. Fields of interest are art, drama, music, and writing or places where they can express, assemble, or implement creative ideas.

CREATOR OCCUPATIONS
Suggested careers are Advertising Executive, Architect, Web Designer, Creative Director, Public Relations, Fine or Commercial Artist, Interior Decorator, Lawyer, Librarian, Musician, Reporter, Art Teacher, Broadcaster, Technical Writer, English Teacher, Architect, Photographer, Medical Illustrator, Corporate Trainer, Author, Editor, Landscape Architect, Exhibit Builder, and Package Designer.

CREATOR WORKPLACES
Consider workplaces where you can create and improve beauty and aesthetic qualities. Unstructured, flexible organizations that allow self-expression work best with your free-spirited nature.

Suggested Creator workplaces are advertising, public relations, and interior decorating firms; artistic studios, theaters and concert halls; institutions that teach crafts, universities, music, and dance schools. Other workplaces to consider are art institutes, museums, libraries, and galleries.

2nd Best Occupational Category

You're an ORGANIZER

Keywords:

Self-Control, Practical, Self-Contained, Orderly, Systematic, Precise, and Accurate

More book stuff.

2010-02-10T10:12:00.004-05:00

I was going to run some errands this morning, but as the snow is falling again and accumulating far beyond what the weather people said it would, I guess I'll stay home and not risk the chaos out there.

Kim asked what I've been reading, so here's a rough list of things...

I read a mystery called The White Garden by Stephanie Barron, who writes a pretty good mystery series about Jane Austen that I used to read. This is a stand-alone novel about what may have really happened after Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with rocks and waded into the river in 1941. It was pretty good (I have found Barron to be a consistently "pretty good" writer) and it got me interested in Virginia Woolf and her friend/lover Vita-Sackville-West, and also the gardens at Sissinghurst, Vita's home, as I mentioned before.

So I had a copy of Mrs. Dalloway from the the thrift store around here, and I picked that up. I was an English major in college, and yet I never read any Virginia Woolf, not even "A Room of Her Own," which I think is supposed to be mandatory for English majors with a women's studies emphasis!

I had tried to read Mrs. Dalloway once or twice before and never gotten past the first page or two before getting distracted, but I must have just been in the perfect frame of mind, because I floated right through it and thought it was terrific.

Vita Sackville-West also intrigued me from her characterization in The White Garden, so I ordered one of her novels from Paperback Swap and read it: All Passion Spent. Sackville-West was nowhere near the kind of writer that Woolf was, but it was still an excellent story of an elderly woman whose husband dies and who astounds her children and grandchildren by taking charge of her life for the very first time. It was a quick, good read. There aren't many of Sackville-West's books in print any more, but I'd like to find a few more to sample.

Vita Sackville-West had a very long and interesting marriage to a man named Harold Nicholson, who worked for the diplomatic service in Great Britain. They fell in love and married right before the first World War, but their marriage was severely strained several years later when Vita had her first affair with another woman. This story is told in their son Nigel Nicholson's book Portrait of a Marriage. Vita and Harold spent almost forty more years together after this crisis, but never shared a bed again, she sleeping with other women and the occasional man, he sleeping with other men. And yet they were devoted to each other and to their homes and gardens. It's a pretty interesting story, to say the least.

I am a total Anglophile, and books that take place around the First World War through the Second World War are always interesting to me. Someone on the Paperback Swap forums (have I mentioned how much I love that site?!) brought up an author named E.F. Benson, who was a prolific writer, but who is most famous today for six novels he wrote about a woman named Emmeline Lucas (called "Lucia" by her friends) who rules the small town she lives in with an iron fist. The first Lucia book (Queen Lucia) was written in 1920, and you wouldn't think a 90-year-old book could be so wickedly funny, but it is. I've read the first three books and have the second three on order...I don't even know how to describe them except to say that if you find British sitcoms funny, you will probably find these books funny. Nobody is better at poking fun at people's pretensions than the British.

I finally got 84, Charing Cross Road from my Paperback Swap wish list...I had seen part of the movie on TV a month or so ago, so I knew how it ended, but I still enjoyed the book. It's a very quick read, a little story told in letters between a New York writer named Helene Hanff and the used bookstore in England where she orders books. The letters span a 20-year period. It made me very nostalgic for a time when you could stick a couple of bucks in an envelope and get antique books from London!

Somehow I got interested in reading Shirley Jackson, and I can't remember how. Many people had to read her short story "The Lottery" in junior high or high school--it's her most famous work by far. I heard somewhere about her last book We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and requested it for Christmas, and read it all on Christmas evening, which was a creepy way to end a holiday. It is one of the oddest books I have ever read, but it sticks with you--the story of two sisters who live in a big house with their deranged uncle, as told by the younger sister Merricat. Read it, it's good.

Then a couple weeks ago I picked up Jackson's other novel, The Haunting of Hill House, which was also very good. For people who are jaded by years of violent horror films, this book might not make much of an impact, but if you are an imaginative sort of person who doesn't even like to sit through scary movie previews, you'll get quite a few pleasurable spine chills from the story. It, too, has stuck with me...Jackson had a real talent for setting a scene and adding details that made it come to life and feel very real to the reader.

Shirley Jackson spent her early career writing the kind of domestic humor that a lot of women writers were stuck writing in the late 40s and through the 60s--stories about absent-minded husbands and adorable but cantankerous children. I found her best-known of this type of book, Life Among the Savages, and read it a few days ago. After reading her dark, spooky fiction, this light-hearted story of her four children and her family's move to an old house in Vermont hardly seems like it could be written by the same person at first glance, but I could see in it some of her same careful prose and even a few dark bits peeping out here and there.

I am really eager to get Jackson's biography--it's on my wish list at Paperback Swap--and find out more about her. She died in her mid-forties, from too much food, alcohol and pills--certainly the flip side of the light-hearted wife and mom she portrayed in her humor books, and more in keeping with the haunted women in her short stories and novels.

So that's a bit of what I've been reading the past few weeks. And I just keep finding more and more and more...!

Book stuff.

2010-02-09T22:39:00.004-05:00

This is the year I turn forty, and even though it doesn't happen until October, I am already wrestling with it hard.

One of the many anxieties that has crossed my mind related to turning forty is silly, but very much a part of the "time running out" feeling I've been wrestling with, and that is--so many books to read, so little time. Which is a cliche, but like most cliches, all too true!

I've always been a voracious reader, but I hopped and skipped along, reading this and that, or not reading anything new for a few weeks here or there...and I often bemoaned the fact that I had "nothing to read." Lately, I've been feeling more and more breathless, looking at the stacks of books to be read, and finding new books to add to the stacks almost every day. I've gone from famine to feast, especially since I joined Paperback Swap and started trading for books I never would have found otherwise.

I watched a BBC miniseries of "Bleak House" this week on Netflix, and decided to read the book, which I was pretty sure I had tucked away on a shelf upstairs. I dug around and found A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations, which I've read; and David Copperfield and Oliver Twist, which I haven't gotten to yet, but no Bleak House.

Providentially, Borders sent me a coupon in this morning's e-mail, so I printed it off and took myself to Borders, where I did find a copy of Bleak House and heaved it down off the top shelf. Let's just say this is a daunting-looking book. Even in paperback, it weighs a ton. It's 800-some pages long--and tiny type! I have a feeling this book may take me through my fortieth birthday and beyond.

In the past few months I've been finding all sorts of new topics and new authors, with an emphasis on early 20th-century fiction and history. I've read bits of Dorothy Parker and Shirley Jackson, Virginia Woolf and Vita-Sackville-West. I've read about Bohemians in England and the Lost Generation and the gardens at Sissinghurst Castle. Every topic and every author washes up against each other and overlaps and there's always more threads to follow and more people to find out about. It's a little overwhelming.

I've also changed my method of reading lately. I'm using bookmarks! I've always been a dog-earer and a plopping-open-face-down reader, but after ruining a couple of perfectly good books by plopping them face-down onto unseen table and counter stains, I decided to invest in a couple of tassled bookmarks. They have an added bonus in that you can play with the tassel while you read.

Maybe it's just a winter kind of feeling, and once the sun comes back out and there's more to do outside, I'll lose this urgency that is making me feel like I should have a book in front of me at all times. But right now, I feel like a squirrel stashing nuts--except it's books and they take up way more room.